499. Sky High (2005)

Starring: Kurt Russell, Kelly Preston, Michael Angarano

Director: Mike Mitchell

Running Time: 100 mins

Sky High is an American film about a young boy, son of the world’s two most famous superheroes, who attends the school for heroes of the future: Sky High, without actually having any powers of his own.

Well, if you’re looking for a real Disney cheesefest that’s a way to put a huge smile on a 10 year old’s face, but make anybody older than that grind their teeth to sawdust, look no further, because this achieves spectacularly in being one of the most cringeworthy, yet fun films I’ve ever seen.

I mean, honestly, a high school? Full of superhero teenagers? This must have taken about five minutes for Disney to come up with and write the script, because it’s just such an overly simple and cheesy film that doesn’t present anything but a formulaic piece of kids’ fantasy.

I saw this when it first came out in cinemas, and saw it countless times after that within the next year or so, but this is the first time I’ve actually noticed how terribly cheesy, unoriginal and unfunny it is, failing to turn what could be a hilarious concept into anything remotely funny or surprisingly original.

However, somehow, this film succeeds in still being great fun to watch. Pretty much all of me appreciates how terrible it actually is, but there’s just a little bit of me that appreciates its simple action and story, and therefore, despite being incredibly cringeworthy, it’s actually a very fun kids’ film.

That’s only in the bits where it doesn’t take itself seriously. Towards the end, everything gets a little dark and melodramatic, and that’s where it becomes laughably bad, but on the whole, the film isn’t totally appalling, and because of that, I’ll give it a 5.9.