Planes Reviews

Planes is just plane boring. And if you groaned at that pun, you'll probably agree with my assessment. Nearly every single gag is painfully corny, and not in an intentional manner. The story itself covers all the traditional underdog/feel-good movie hallmarks, and you can practically arrange the events of the film in your head before even watching it. Even children and fans of Pixar's (much more enjoyable) Cars movies will probably find themselves distracted or bored.

Planes is more or less Cars in reverse. Instead of a big-city racer learning to slow down and take it easy, Planes is about a crop duster plane that learns to race. The crop duster in question is named Dusty Crophopper, and because of his background in farming, no one (except for some close friends) believes in him. Will Dusty be able to overcome insurmountable odds to claim fame and success?

Take a wild guess.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear; Planes is NOT a Pixar film. It's not even a Disney film! Planes comes courtesy of DisneyToon Studios, whose last theatrical release was 2005's Pooh's Heffalump Movie. However, thanks to its tie-in with the Cars franchise (and a cameo by John Ratzenberger which is actually larger than his last 3 Pixar roles combined), Planes has been mistaken for a Pixar effort, which of course, it is not. In fact, it's odd to say it's an "effort" at all, since there seems to be little legitimate talent of thought involved in this production at all.

Let's be perfectly honest with each other, Planes exists for one reason alone, and that (of course) is money. The Cars franchise has made billions of dollars in merchandising, so why not get a piece of that pie? And yet, I cannot figure out what kid could possibly enjoy this film. Even as a fan of not one, but both of the currently existing Cars films, I found myself decidedly uninterested and bored out of my skull.

It's tempting to criticize Planes for being more of a "kid's film" than a "family film," but that would be implying that Planes is a film. It is, in fact, a product, and it's almost even more insulting that the "film" itself does almost nothing to conceal this fact. You can practically hear the cash registers chiming in melodious song during those (surprisingly dull) flight sequences.

There are only two things one can do during Planes to avoid drifting into slumber. A.) Count how many scenes are lifted directly from Cars. I counted at least four, but I'm willing to believe I missed a few as I was struggling to remain focused on the film while the slow movement of the minute hand on my watch seemed much more fascinating. The other game you can play is "How Many Racial Stereotypes Can One Movie Contain?" In this category, my number was around a half-dozen.

Even the animation itself- usually a strength in any modern animated film- is barely above direct-to-DVD quality. It never comes close to rivaling even the early days of Pixar, Disney, or Dreamworks. And the character designs are completely uninspired.

The only aspect of this film that came close to impressing me was the voice acting. While Dane Cook as the lead, Dusty Crophopper is not interesting (the character itself is deathly dull), the supporting cast is occasionally respectable. The highlights come courtesy of Danny Mann, Teri Hatcher, and Cedric the Entertainer.

The score, composed by Mark Mancina, is fairly pedestrian. There really isn't anything unique or exceptional in the score, though it's fine for what it is. The electric guitar that occasionally seeps into the music, however, I could have done without.

Anyone else would walk into a film like Planes with the lowest possible expectations (perhaps excepting small children). However, I had the tiniest glimmer of hope. And that is because in 2000, DisneyToon Studios released a little gem entitled The Tigger Movie. And while my adoration for that film may be partially influenced by nostalgia, I can all but guarantee that The Tigger Movie will provide a much more entertaining, thoughtful, and wholesome experience for you or your children, than the 90 minute commercial that is Planes.

I think I am in the low percentage when I say I actually really liked this movie. Also I am in the low percentage when I say I love Dane Cook as well. Other voices involved in this were Stacy Keach, Brad Garrett, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Teri hatcher, John Cleese, Cedric the Entertainer, Gabriel Iglesias, Sinbad (Okay didn't know that WTF), Val Kilmer, and some of the usual common voice actors. I thought this movie was funny, interesting, and cute. The characters were quirky and intriguing. I also watched this not expecting too much other than to feel like a kid. It isn't better than Cars, but I did like it more than Cars 2. However that being said the sequel to this really doesn't look too promising as it completely takes away everything this movie worked so hard to accomplish. Anyways this is really good for if you have some kids or want to enjoy being a kid yourself.

'Planes' is a bad spin-off to the 'Cars' franchise, the plot is the exact same as 'Cars 2' except it's plane racing, not car racing

What's original in the plot is stupid and boring, young audiences (up to 10 years) who loved the 'Cars' movies will probably love this too, adults will be less amused!

Most of the plane jokes/puns are pretty stupid, the only good things about this movie are the animation, voice acting and a few jokes, the rest isn't at all good

"I've flown thousands and thousands of miles, and have never gone anywhere."

At its inception, Planes was designed to be a straight-to-video picture, with Disney seeking to cash in on the merchandising success of Cars 2 with minimal effort. A theatrical release was eventually spearheaded, but it's unclear exactly why. Impressive (and expensive) voice cast notwithstanding, Planes is a straight-to-video feature from top to bottom, with underwhelming animation and awful writing. It literally feels as if the screenplay was regurgitated by a computer, as the dialogue is tin-eared and plot points are so by-the-book that no amount of slick visuals can compensate for it. It's utter wank, a thoroughly disposable kiddie flick aimed at the simplest audience possible, and it contains none of the storytelling sophistication or emotional resonance of Pixar's usual output. All the goodwill that Disney instilled with last year's animation gem Wreck-It Ralph has evaporated.

In the sleepy town of Propwash Junction, Dusty Crophopper (Dane Cook) is a plane who dreams of bigger things, aspiring to become an ace air racer despite the obvious limitation of being a crop duster. But Dusty gets help from his friends, bringing in fuel truck Chug (Brad Garrett), forklift mechanic Dottie (Teri Hatcher) and warplane vet Skipper (Stacy Keach) to train and nourish him. Accepted into the Wings Around the Globe Rally, Dusty looks positively ill-equipped to take on his fierce opponents, including the arrogant Ripslinger (Roger Craig Smith), Indian champ Ishanti (Priyanka Chopra), and Mexican flyer El Chupacabra (Carlos Alazraqui). Dusty becomes the subject of ridicule and jokes, but he begins to realise his potential, emerging as a major competitor as the race around the world takes shape.

The screenplay is credited to Jeffrey M. Howard, but if he was paid anything for his efforts on this malarkey, Disney was too generous. There's not a modicum of wit or heart to be seen here; the movie is a mishmash of cultural stereotypes, lazy plane-centric wordplay and bathroom humour, rendering it a special kind of awful. Planes is a victim of awkward structuring, as well. With the story closing at around the 85-minute mark, the movie ploughs through its narrative with tone-deaf rhythm and little cohesion. It takes all of half an hour to reach the major race, whereas a more skilful movie would spend at least an hour building up to the climactic event. Thus, none of Dusty's achievements feel earned. He manages to make the qualifying race without any practice or skill-honing, and his "training" for the race literally amounts to a five-minute montage before he's deemed to be ready. As a result, the movie is completely flat throughout, and there's no connective tissue to allow Planes to soar in any meaningful way. It's also just not funny at all.

With the climactic world race commencing before the halfway mark, it grows very tedious very quickly. Of course, the fact that the planes are going around the world inherently means it will be a long race, but Planes fails to do anything interesting to justify its length. Thus, we get random detours like Dusty helping El Chupacabra find love, and a very strange scene in which Dusty is rescued by the Air Force in the middle of the ocean. Unfortunately, the movie neglects the most important aspect of its story: making Dusty a likeable, sympathetic character. Because Planes treats its set-up as homework, we're never given a compelling reason to care. The fact that Dusty is extremely underdeveloped is most obvious in the character's fear of heights - in a better movie, Dusty's personal demons would be handled in a profound way, but here it's only brought up in three scenes: when it's introduced (and Skipper doesn't even think he needs to overcome it before the race), when he gets scared and fails to overcome it, and later when he finally does overcome it out of nowhere. It's jarring, and as a result, this ostensibly major character arc gains no traction. It doesn't help that Dane Cook is completely ineffective in the role, failing to give Dusty any personality or spunk. John Cleese is also on hand here to voice a plane...but he's given nothing to do. Planes is so bad that even Cleese can't salvage it.

Even Pixar's harshest critics must admit that the Cars pictures are easily the studio's weakest, with Cars 2 in particular an outright disaster. But despite lukewarm box office for both movies, Disney made a killing from toy sales. Indeed, thanks to toys, the Cars movies grossed not just millions but billions, and Disney visibly hoped to recreate this immense success with Planes. Thus, the decision to create this quickie spinoff was motivated purely by money rather than artistry (if it was about artistry, we'd have The Incredibles 2 by now). It's hardly surprisingly, then, that Planes walks and talks like a toy commercial, aiming to fill the frame with as many colourfully designed characters as possible. For fuck's sake, even cinemas were selling Planes toys while it was being screened.

The only positive thing that can be said about Planes is that it's marginally better than Cars 2, which is a rotten-to-the-core sequel without any redeeming qualities. It's also fortunate that Planes is so short. After all, judging by how awful every frame of this movie is, if this particular creative team attempted proper character development, it might've resulted in an even more agonising creation. With underwhelming animation, no laughs to be had, and nothing interesting for adults, Planes is a total washout.

2.8/10

The success of 'Cars' is nothing to do with this movie, in fact it was let down because of that movie's popularity. It was only an inspiration to make the 'Planes', maybe someday in the near future we can expect 'Boats' and fusion of all the three like 'The Avengers'. Like the movies 'Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines' and 'The Great Race', 'Planes' is about a little crop duster plane who dreams to participate in the race event.

I did not expect much, I knew it would be highly influenced by 'Cars'. The movie was not bad, but the thing was it was hard to understand by everyone. Because, unlike 'Cars' this movie had plenty of dialogue lines related to automobiles. Something like 'This guy need his head gasket checked' and 'Kick some tail buddy' kinda stuffs. You know kids can't get those, it is purely for grown ups that too somehow who knows automobiles.

Priyanka Chopra's big leap on to Hollywood as a plane character called Ishani. Not a big role but quite a fair one to expose her recognition worldwide. I can call the movie just hit and miss. The production house already announced a sequel to this called 'Fire & Rescue'. Hope that would be a better than this. This is a one time watchable movie, more like one of the not so good but okayish animation of the year like 'Despicable Me 2'.