Planes (2013)

Too much of everything

Excellent but underrated film

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Cars was not the most commercially successful film from Pixar but it had enough threads to be popular abroad and it led Disney to produce a spin off franchise of Planes which has the same animation style of Cars.Dusty Crophopper is a crop dusting plane that sprays fertiliser but really wants to be a racing plane. However he has a chance of fulfilling his dreams as he gets some training from a retired flying ace, gets together a ragtag crew and takes part in a prestigious around the world flying competition where initially he is not taken seriously.This is a plucky underdog story that smaller children would enjoy, the plot of Planes does not deviate too far from the formula of the Cars series including the stereotypes of the International crew.

(Flash Review)I assumed because both films have similar movie logos and car illustrations that look the same as Cars Pixar that Pixar was behind this. Thankfully, for Pixar it isn't part of their portfolio. The animations were pretty solid and there were some fun flying scenes but the story was cliché to the max; even for a kids movie. Cars had a great story, was funny, had some twists yet also engaging for parents. Many scenes from Planes felt rushed or forced to fit in the cookie-cutter story arc. And I now fully understand why animated films hire out A-list actors to do character voices, not just for marketing, but because you really notice when they are substandard such as the voice of the main plane character. It just didn't feel right or warm or connecting. The movie was fine but several notches below anything from Pixar. Oh yah, the plot…weak little crop duster plane tries to compete with bigger and faster planes. Of course being nice, selfless and clever, he…..probably will surprise his competition. Three cheers for boxing over your weight class.

First thing you should know about planes: it's a spin off to the cars movies. I will split this review into sections to give you a better overview of how I ended up with this rating.Visuals: This is by far the best part of the movie. The world of planes feels very colorful and alive and there are a lot of changes in location. The flight scenes are well done too. 8/10Story: This is where the movie fails to deliver. Sure it is a spin off to cars but there are just too many similar scenes/characters. The movie has barely anything that makes it stand out. You always know whats coming next and how the movie will end and it will be even worse if you watched cars before. The story is still okay and I can imagine you will have fun watching it with your kids and if you have not watched cars before. 4/10Sound: Not much to say here. It was good but nothing spectacular. 6/10

The story is quite an average one, especially in animations. It's about one character's struggle and rise from mediocrity to success, from zero to hero. But as it turns out in development and execution, it's nothing new. That may well be understood considering the primary target of animation is to educate little children, in a fun and soft way, on the lessons of life. What makes this quite bad is that despite it puts the big sign "World of Cars" in front of the movie's opening logo, there's nothing else that connects "Planes" to it's parent world. At the least they can do is showing Lightning McQueen passing along on the road or some kind of that, but no, there's nothing connecting them.