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How entertaining? ★★☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 14 August 2013
This article is a review of PLANES.
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“If you ask me, more racers should want to be crop dusters,” Chug
Dear oh dear. PLANES maybe from the “world of CARS”, but those two Pixar films, the weakest in their strikingly good canon, are masterpieces compared this. It doesn’t take long at all for a flatulence joke to appear, and the tone is set for a pedestrian cartoon aimed at the very youngest. Dusty is a crop duster who dreams of entering the “Wings Around the Globe” rally.
The tale of a plucky, hard working plane taking on the world’s elite might have gone in any number of directions:
- WACKY RACES-style caper,
- Exhilarating aerial thriller, or
- Moving tale of adversity.
Instead, the filmmakers scoop up every underdog racing cliché and artlessly shovel them onto the screen. Odd moments of 3D aerial wonder cannot paper over the storytelling by rote.
Dear oh dear. PLANES maybe from the “world of CARS”, but those two Pixar films, the weakest in their strikingly good canon, are masterpieces compared this. It doesn’t take long at all for a flatulence joke to appear, and the tone is set for a pedestrian cartoon aimed at the very youngest. Dusty is a crop duster who dreams of entering the “Wings Around the Globe” rally.
The tale of a plucky, hard working plane taking on the world’s elite might have gone in any number of directions:
- WACKY RACES-style caper,
- Exhilarating aerial thriller, or
- Moving tale of adversity.
Instead, the filmmakers scoop up every underdog racing cliché and artlessly shovel them onto the screen. Odd moments of 3D aerial wonder cannot paper over the storytelling by rote.
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Dusty Crophopper enters the qualifier and just misses out on a place for the prestigious international tournament. However, what do you know, one of those ahead qualified illegally. So a humble flier, from Propwise Junction – “not on the map”, is now in the same league as the big boys and girls. His friends, Dotty, a forklift, and Chug, a refuelling truck, join his quest. Dusty still needs more help, and seeks out Skipper, a grounded fighter plane, to coach him. Hesitantly the veteran takes the young upstart under his wing (ahem!). Then we enter depressingly tired sports/animated movie tropes:
- Obnoxious champion and rival Ripslinger, who at first treats our hero with disdain, and then when Dusty shows promise, has no problem cheating,
- Banal training montage, and
- Comedy, quote-unquote, foil.
To add to Dusty’s handicap compared to the rest of the field, he’s afraid of heights. Yeah, that’s right. Added to that, there are random comments that run the gamut from the weird (talk of planes separated at birth, err, what does that conjure in the imagination exactly?) to the offensive (an Indian plane states about her people, “many believe we’ll be recycled as tractors”, what?!). There are plenty of national stereotypes – British, Mexican, German, Nepalese - to make you question the moral line PLANES take. Then there are logical queries. The race goes to New York. We see skyscrapers. Who lives in them? Cars? Eh? The dialogue is awful, and plot beats so conventional. Pretty dire all round, unfortunately to report.
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