Dusty has dreams of racing but he is afraid of heights and is a crop-duster-which are not built for racing. Can he fulfill his dream?
The Cars franchise is the Pixar film that many people point to as being Pixar’s worst. Though it can have its moments, it seems obvious why Cars was the second Pixar franchise to get a sequel: merchandising.
Cars has always had great merchandising sales. That’s not surprising though. Vehicle toys have long sold well to both kids and collectors. It isn’t honestly surprising that Disney wanted to make more money off the Cars franchise by exploring a non-car side of the world.
Now, plenty of movies have come out over the years that are basically toy commercials but entertain as stand-along films. I mean, look at the Lego Movie as an example for that. But unfortunately, a good movie wasn’t what you get when watching Planes.
To be clear, the movie itself is not bad but instead it is so middle of the road that it’s hard to imagine I will think much about it after writing the review.
Characters
There are definitely characters in the film. And there are character arcs for a few of them. (My favorite character was the British plane to be honest).
But the characters never stood out much beyond the stereotype that they represented. What do I mean? Oh boy! We have in this film many planes that are representatives of their countries and are not afraid to make super obvious which country that is. You’ve got the previously mentioned British plane acting super pompous and even a Mexican plane that seems to mostly think about romance. The use of country stereotypes felt like a way to get quick laughs and shorthand character identities which doesn’t seem like a great way to go about characters.
The main character is harmless but really nothing special. It is the cast of characters that you would expect for an underdog story. Once more, it doesn’t feel like a lot of thought went into the characters outside of what they would represent.
Story
Honestly, the story felt rushed. Doing a race across the world is something that could have taken the whole movie but that part of the movie only really starts half way in. There is the training and getting into the race parts of the film which, again, could have taken more time. A lot was going on and though that prevented the film from being boring, I think it is one of the reasons that the characters never got to be fleshed out.
Animation
The animation is fine. Not spectacular. I ended up watching Cars 3 soon after this film and Planes can’t compare but compared to a lot of other animated films coming out at the time, it is decent. Honestly, this category didn’t need to be mentioned except that I feel it is another category that shows that the film just skims by as mediocre.
Conclusion
Do I recommend this film? Eh, it is too harmless to say that it needs to be avoided but I don’t think that it is worth sneaking out. My recommendation is that if you are traveling and need something to watch this will get the job done. Beyond that, you can find plenty of better movies to use your time and watch.
4.5/10
Otno 