2.35:1 DVD capture: Sky High The DVD

Buy the SKY HIGH poster at Moviegoods (click on image) SKY HIGH Original Motion Picture Soundtrack CD Buy at Amazon USA Buy at Amazon Canada At the risk of pegging myself as one of the stupid kids, I have to confess real adoration for this picture. Maybe it's Kurt's affectionate and self-deprecating send-up of superdads (which almost makes up for Dreamer), maybe it's the Hughesian trappings (the '80s soundtrack covers, the stratification that goes on between heroes and sidekicks) and old-school editing style, or maybe it's Danielle Panabaker's alarming resemblance to Beetlejuice-era Winona Ryder; in other words, maybe it locates my Achilles Heels with sad precision. But so far, no movie this year has given me a purer pop high than Sky High. Disney presents the film on DVD in a luscious 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer*--gone is the excess filtering of their more recent live-action fare, replaced by an unobtrusive, mood-setting mist of grain. Ed Gonzalez over at SLANT noted some digital schmutz on areas of intense colour, but, not for lack of trying, I couldn't get our review copy to produce this artifact. For a movie with such an exuberant production design, Sky High actually sports a fairly tame soundmix, and the DD 5.1 audio on this disc reproduces the theatrical experience with fidelity. Bruce "Sonic Boom" Campbell's bellows utilize all six channels, but you pretty much have to crank this puppy past reference level to get the full effect. Extras are disposable but moderately enjoyable. An "Alternate Opening" (3 mins.) showcases the flashback to the Commander and Jet Stream's takedown of Royal Pain in its entirety, while "Super Bloopers" (4 mins.) features the hilarious sight of Michael Angarano high-fiving a bemused Panabaker after their kissing scene. Director Mike Mitchell and producer Andrew Gunn mock this stupendously immature affectation in "Welcome to Sky High" (15 mins.), which, unlike the revelatory companion featurette "Breaking Down Walls: The Stunts of Sky High" (7 mins.), hardly qualifies as a making-of, although it's interesting to learn that the heroes and sidekicks split into two camps off-camera as well. The video for Bowling for Soup's "Melt With You" cover (in 5.1, no less) plus sneak peeks at Lady and the Tramp, Glory Road, The Greatest Game Ever Played, Once Upon a Mattress, The Proud Family Movie, "Raven's House Party", Toy Story 2, and "Kim Possible" round out the disc. The first three trailers automatically cue up prior to the main menu.-Bill Chambers *Also available in fullscreen.

The Film
excerpted from a longer review found here

Understand that I'm not getting on Mike "Surviving Christmas" Mitchell's superhero spoof by way of teen movie Sky High for being socially damaging so much as I'm getting on it for being jejune in every single measurable category. Its mentality is pure "Saved by the Bell" and "Sabrina the Teenage Witch"--in other words, it's extraordinarily low slapstick humour sanitized to the point of nausea, with an affection for camp kitsch so extreme that it's difficult to discern how much of it is self-knowing and how much of it is a result of nobody knowing anything. It's a throwback for Kurt Russell to his Disney Movie of the Week days in terms of screenplay, ethic, and production value, and if Kelly Preston seems right at home, well, that says a lot more about the plastic fantastic Preston than it does about Sky High. Consider the film's world, a place where superheroes are commonplace and send their kids to school at the titular floating institution where they discover powers that make them heroes or relegate them to sidekick status. Not un-clever by any grammar school criteria, it's lamentably shallow as the basis for a feature goes, leading to a film that's basically every single teen formula in the history of teens (homecoming dance date intrigue, parties while the folks are away, old friends abandoned for cooler friends then reconciled, and so on) punctuated with horrible special effects and superhero puns. Worse, Mitchell is as in love with the Dutch angle (the camera canted for no good reason) and the unmotivated pan and zoom as poor, addled Roger Christian, the auteur behind Mr. Preston John Travolta's Battlefield Earth--meaning that while there's little substance in front of the camera, there's somehow less behind it.

Our hero is Will Stronghold (Michael Angarano), just your average ordinary guy hanging out with the loser sidekicks and pining for the lovely Gwen (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) even though true love is right under his nose in the form of awkward pal Layla (Danielle Panabaker). How long will it take Will to realize that Gwen's a bitch and that Layla's his soul mate? Oh, until a minute before Layla is taken as a hostage by the bad guy so that Will can save her and then, in a public place, proclaim his error and ever-lasting devotion. The parents are Captain Stronghold (Russell) and Josie Jetstream (Preston)--the lack of imagination in their naming stinking of a film that should have been made by Charles Band or Lloyd Kaufman. It's mid-seventies, Saturday afternoon "Land of the Lost" hokum as imagined by Roger Corman but free, almost completely, of fun. In fun's place find lugubrious, slavish devotion to formula that's only temporarily relieved by a cameo from Bruce Campbell as a sadistic gym teacher, Cloris Leachman as the school nurse, and Kid in the Hall Kevin McDonald as wide-eyed Mr. Medulla. Russell attempts a campy exuberance that's brave but brutally out-of-place in a film full of amateurs playing it straight (and Prestons playing it vacuous), leaving the only joy of the piece a soundtrack full of teenyboppers covering all those moldy-oldies from the New Wave (Talking Heads, Til Tuesday, The Cars, The Fixx) '80s. When did I become the fogy? To quote another hale Reagan-era fave, "We close our eyes and the world has turned around again." Amen.-Walter Chaw

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