It’s yet again another in the long lineup of standard animated movies from the year of 2013. Once again we have another sports underdog movie like Turbo, but throwing away all that slightly creative brother chemistry and replacing it with fanatical fan commentary. yippee. In all seriousness though my original thoughts on the movie we’re “bleh” at best. I didn’t think on way or the other of Cars, never even wanted to see the sequel, so how can the movie that’s just once again an overblown commercial for a new line of toys possibly have m think anything else? Well let’s find out.
It’s planes, planes, planes in this story as we follow the rising talent Dusty Crophopper, played by the ever charismatic Dane Cook, as he starts off as just a normal crop-duster who no one could take seriously. But he has bigger dreams as he put all his oil, gas, and bolts into qualifying for the Wings Across the World, and when he did qualify an old tired war veteran named Skipper (Stacey Kaech) offers to train him to be the best flier ever. The only problem is, Dusty is afraid of heights. Whoopsie-doops. After a montage, Dusty waves goodbye to his completely forgettable friends and heads to the starting line where a bunch of nationally different planes are there to greet him including the villain and champ, Ripslinger (Roger Craig Smith). So the race is now on and starting by flying low Dusty goes to win the race. Will Dusty be able to win against the powerhouse Ripslinger? Will he win the admiration and hearts of everybody in the world? Will he uncover the Skipper obvious dark hidden secret? OF COURSE HE WILL!!
That’s not even debatable for someone who hasn’t seen a single movie ever. Planes is the most straightforward and predictable movie out of the bunch in this Year of Standards. At least Turbo threw in the interesting Brother Brother conflict, but here there’s really nothing to work with. Let’s start off with the characters, all of them are by the books standard and flat. The underdog, the coach, the dismissive girl, the dumb comic relief, the foreign comic relief, and so on and so forth. So, because their personalities are so uninventive and plain their characters arcs match that.
On the animation side this looks just as good as Cars 2, even though I’ve only seen the trailers to Cars 2. It’s Disney doing Pixar style. For me neither Disney or Pixar have ever designed something that was unappealing to look at or in any stretch of the word ugly. But comparing it to Turbo again, that movie in its racing scenes really gave this sense of weight and speed. Planes doesn’t have that but I will say that “sometimes” it looks like I’m watching the planes from Top Gun fly around and that’s pretty cool. Other then that it’s appealing but not note worthy.
Finally the story is exactly like the characters, characters arcs, and animation; standard, flat, just borderline appealing and unamazing. However with all that said I can’t say it’s a horrible movie. Now you might be thinking “What?! You just spent two paragraphs detailing how standard, unamazing and all those other adjectives Planes is? How can it not be horrible?” I’m going to just say straight, that its definitely just my bias talking.
Quick note on my thoughts on biases. Every single person has a bias. There is no such thing as an unbiased person. People have preferred stories, ways to eat, ways to talk and etc. What people prefer and hate are there biases so I would describe all my reviews as bias reviews. But I’m biased to certain plots and jokes aka. Poop jokes. I’m not biased when it comes to any company or figurehead like Seth McFarlane, Disney, and even Video Brinquedo. I may go watch these figures and companies’ shows and movies with first impressions, based on the advertisements and Internet gossip, but I will let the merit of the work itself face my biases alone. Leaving my opinions on the company or person up to just my overall thoughts on their work as a whole. I think with this way I look at biases I’ve allowed myself to be more surprised with the quality of the movies and shows I watch and thus enjoy or hate them more.
With that out of the way, what do my biases have to do in this instance? Let’s compare Cars and Planes for a minute. The story of Cars is the story of the fallen star of Lightning McQueen having to learn traditional values to rise to the top again after being hit down to the slums. The traditional redemption story archetype. Planes on the other hand I said is the Underdog story archetype, Dusty has to defy the odds because of being a crop-duster to win the grand prize that he’s been dreaming of. I just find with the Underdog story the audience has a better chance to root for the protagonist as in these stories the underdog is played to be the nice guy, who breaks no rules to get what he wants. While the redemption is about a jerk who has to learn to not be a jerk. This isn’t to say either archetypal story is bad but with both framings side to side, I want to see Dusty win the race way more then I want to see Lightning become famous again. There’s just a more identifiable trait with the underdog hero for myself rather then the redeemer.
The other thing that I noticed is that this film has a funny commentary on fandoms. But funny interesting not actually humorous. At all. First we got Dusty’s stupid sidekick Chug (Brad Garrett) selling a bunch of Dusty brand merchandize. Then we got a weird Swedish split personality plane car that comes up to Dusty saying he’s his fan. And the various scenes where we cut to the audience of the race (the cars watching at home) and we watch them give their slight commentary. For me at least, these instances almost seem like the movie is making fun of itself. Like Planes knows how ridiculous the whole premise of this film is so it flat out has scenes where it shows the planes selling overpriced merchandise and acting completely fanboyish. This was actually pretty refreshing and at least made me feel like the writers were at least somewhat in on the joke. Then again it still doesn’t change the fact that even if you’re poking fun at yourself for being a merchandise-spewing machine, you’re still a merchandise-spewing machine.
Altogether now, do not see Planes. While I would honestly say that Planes is leaps and bounds better then Cars it’s just not worth the watch even for the few cool things I noticed. Once again, bland stock characters, only just appealing visuals and a standard story makes for just a plain standard movie. I personally only think it’s plain mediocre but for other animation fans and families Planes is definitely not for you. Try Turbo instead.
Written By Taylor “Whyboy” Wyatt
Taylor Wyatt DC Blog 
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