Sky High - 2005

Director: Mike Mitchell
Writers: Paul Hernandez, Bob Schooley, & Mark McKorkle
Starring: Michael Angarano, Danielle Panabaker, Kurt Russell, Kelly Preston, Steven Strait, Mary Elizabeth Winstead

"You look at them and see the defenders of the world. All I see is my dad wearing tights." Will Stronghold (Angarano) is the son of the world's two greatest superheroes: Jetstream (Preston) and the Commander (Russell). The only problem: he's heading off to Sky High, the training school for heroes and sidekicks, with no powers of his own. Unbeknownst to them all, an evil plot is being hatched to take down the school, and superherodom as we know it.

This movie was terrible. The costumes are tacky, the special effects budget was nowhere near what it needed to be, and the plot is wildly predictable, not to mention a plothole vital to the climax that you could drive a truck through. The acting's decent, but there just isn't a lot for the actors to go on. There are some nice nods to legitimate superhero media like the Wonder Woman TV show (Lynda Carter and Cloris Leachman have small roles) and Spider-man (a line of dialogue about how quickly some people get powers), but that's ruined by more blatant references, like Carter's character virtually confessing to be Wonder Woman, on top of spinning to activate her power. They also depict X-ray vision with red beams a la heat vision, which any superhero film worth its salt should know better than to do. Also: this (minor spoiler). HERO LIGHTING ONLY WORKS WHEN IT DOESN'T LOOK UNNATURAL. Oh, and how this film got away with having a redheaded girl with control over plants without getting sued by DC is beyond me, if Lynda Carter wasn't allowed to wear gold bracelets. I put this film on par with Ghost Rider and Schumacher's contributions to the Batman franchise. D