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| Directed by | Klay Hall |
|---|---|
| Produced by | Traci Balthazor-Flynn |
| Screenplay by | Jeffrey M. Howard |
| Story by | John Lassete Klay Hall Jeffrey M. Howard |
| Starring | Dane Cook Stacy Keach Priyanka Chopra Brad Garrett Cedric the Entertainer Julia Louis-Dreyfus Roger Craig Smith John Cleese Carlos Alazraqui |
| Music by | Mark Mancina |
| Editing by | Jeremy Milton |
| Studio | Walt Disney Pictures DisneyToon Studios |
Like most of DisneyToon's films, it was initially set to be released as a direct-to-video film, but was theatrically released on August 9, 2013 in the Disney Digital 3D and RealD 3D formats. A sequel, titled Planes: Fire & Rescue, will follow in 2014.
PLOT
Dusty Crophopper (Dane Cook) is a cropduster plane who works at a cornfield and practices aerobatic manuveurs in his spare time, dreaming of becoming a racer. His dreams are scorned by his boss, Leadbottom (Cedric the Entertainer) and his forklift mechanic friend, Dottie (Teri Hatcher), yet supported by his fuel truck friend, Chug (Brad Garrett). Dusty and Chug train for qualifiers for the upcoming Wings Across the World race. The night before the qualifiers, Dusty asks an elderly and reclusive navy war plane named Skipper Riley (Stacy Keach) to teach him how to fly well, but Skipper refuses. Dusty enters the qualifiers, and although the audience mocks him for being a crop duster, he manages to wow them by his well-practiced flight maneuvers, but comes in 6th place and does not qualify. A few days later, a representative from the qualifier (Sinbad) visits his town looking for Dusty and announces to him that he now placed 5th. This is due to the qualifier ahead of Dusty using an illegal fuel enhancement, nitromethane, getting him disqualified and Dusty replacing him.
Later in the morning, Skipper visits Dusty and tries to talk him out of racing, but when Dusty explains he wants to prove he's more than just a crop duster, Skipper, with the help of his forklift assistant Sparky (Danny Mann), decides to mentor Dusty on his speed and agility. While in the midst of his training, Dusty admits that he has a fear of heights. Despite this, their training continues and when it is complete, Dusty heads off to the meeting of the race at John F. Kennedy Airport where he finds a friend in an eccentric, but loyal Mexican race-plane named El Chupacabra (Carlos Alazraqui) who soon falls in love with a beautiful French-Canadian racer named Rochelle (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who shows little interest in him. Dusty then makes a rival of the arrogant and villainous three-time winner plane Ripslinger (Roger Craig Smith), who rudely dismisses him as being only a crop duster. Dusty also falls in love with an Indian racer plane named Ishani (Priyanka Chopra).
The first leg of the race is from New York to Iceland. Dusty's refusal to fly high causes him to finish in last place. The second leg of the race is to Germany. Dusty shows good sportsmanship by saving another racer, Bulldog (John Cleese), from crashing when his eyes get squirted with oil from his propellers, winning Bulldog's respect, but finishing last again. The third leg is to an air base at Agra in India, while the fourth leg is over Nepal. In India, Ishani gives Dusty advice on how to fly low through the Himalayas by following some railroad tracks. However, he is forced to fly through a tunnel and narrowly avoids a head-on collision with a steam train, but miraculously finishes first in Nepal. Dusty realizes Ishani deliberately gave him bad advice to get a new propeller from Ripslinger and he shuns her.
The fifth leg is over the Hump (the mountains between northeast India and south China) to Shanghai, where Dusty gets into first place again. There, Dusty manages to help El Chupacabra win Rochelle over with a romantic song, which works a little too well.
The sixth leg is across the Pacific Ocean to Mexico. Ripslinger's henchmen, Ned and Zed (Gabriel Iglesias), destroy Dusty's navigation antenna. Lost and low on fuel and unable to find Hawaii, Dusty is found by two Super Hornets (Val Kilmer and Anthony Edwards) who escort him to the USS "Flysinhower" (a reference to the real-life aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69)) which allows him to land and refuel and be repaired. While on the carrier, Dusty sees a hall of fame set up for Skipper's squadron, but discovers that Skipper only flew one mission, which contradicts his previous reputation as a veteran of many battles. He then has to take off and try to beat an oncoming storm. The storm becomes very violent with enormous waves. Dusty gets distracted from flying due to his thoughts about Skipper and ends up crashing into the ocean, but is rescued. He is flown to Mexico to his friends, but he is severely damaged and may never fly again. Skipper confesses to Dusty that he did indeed fly only one mission in the Pacific theatre where his entire squad of trainees was killed in an attack on the Japanese Navy. Skipper was the only survivor, but torn by his guilt, he never trained another plane or flew again. Demoralized and heartbroken, Dusty begins to consider dropping out of the race, but is encouraged by his friends, racers and many of his new-found fans to continue and they all donate parts to have Dusty repaired.
The seventh leg is back to New York. With a change of heart and morale restored, Dusty becomes determined to win the race, but Ripslinger still won't give up and plots to sabotage his chances of winning. He and his goons ambush Dusty, but are thwarted by Skipper, who overcame his guilt and came to help Dusty. When trying to catch up with Ripslinger, Dusty conquers his fear of heights when his engine starts losing power, forcing him to ride the jetstream when he recognizes from clouds that a jetstream is overhead. Both he and Ripslinger make it to the finish line in New York. When it looks like Ripslinger will win, his ego gets the best of him and slows down to have his picture taken. Dusty seizes the opportunity and wins the race while Ripslinger crashes into some portable toilets. Dusty is congratulated by his friends and fans and Skipper thanks him for giving him the confidence to fly again. Skipper rejoins the navy on the Flysinhower with Dusty as his partner and they take flight together.
At the end of the credits, a message appears stating "Dusty Crophopper will return in Planes: Fire & Rescue."
TRAILER
REVIEW
Beware of critics gunning for Planes as if they were the Red Baron dive-bombing Snoopy. The aeronautical spin-off of Pixar's "Cars" franchise is carrying way too much unchecked baggage to be dismissed as yet another cartoon attraction in a summer already overrun with leafy warriors, collegiate monsters, high-octane snails, mumbling Minions and annoying Smurfs.
First, Disney—which owns the premier animation house that "Toy Story" built—had the audacity to put what was originally a straight-to-DVD release into theaters and pass it off as a "real" movie—and without the benefit of the kind of second-thought upgrades afforded to "Toy Story 2," a onetime direct-to-video project. Then a "Cars" logo was slapped on ads and posters, along with the tagline "From the world above Cars," perhaps causing some patrons to think "Planes" is a Pixar film instead a product of Disney's home-entertainment division. On top of that, they had the nerve to cram store shelves with beckoning toy replicas of the movie's cute flying machines, just in time to disrupt back-to-school shopping expeditions.
No one can fault Disney too much for seizing a money-making opportunity—especially once they realized they weren't going to make much "Hi-yo, Silver!" off of "The Lone Ranger." Instead, it all comes down to whether "Planes" will please its core audience of tots and their parents who want more of what "Cars" and its sequel (both probably the least-loved of Pixar's 14 features) gave them—a cleverly conceived human-less universe tweaked for vehicular inhabitants, zoom-y action stunts, hokey pun-filled humor and colorful characters. Judging on that scale, "Planes" modestly succeeds. Very modestly.
From the opening frames, adults will immediately notice a certain-stripped down sensibility, with the entrance of Dusty Crophopper (voiced with guy-ish gusto by Dane Cook), a Midwestern crop duster who dreams of competing in a race around the world against an eccentric flock of international competitors. It's 1965's "Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines" but minus the men. Although there are plenty of swell loop-de-loop visual thrills in the 3-D-enhanced airborne sequences, the backdrops are barely filled out and eye-catching details are lacking.
The plot is generic to a fault, presenting Dusty as a typical fish out of water with big dreams whose fatal flaw is an inconvenient fear of extreme heights. The movie's flight plan follows the ups and downs of our brave little single-prop racer as he runs into an array of barriers—devious foes, a femme fatale, low fuel, bad weather and the ever-popular mechanical difficulties—while heading to such destinations as Iceland, the Himalayas and Mexico. Naturally, he has a crew of sidekicks including slow-witted fuel truck Chug (Brad Garrett), no-nonsense mechanic Dottie (Teri Hatcher) and Skipper Riley (Stacy Keach), a Navy Corsair who flew in World War II and is the grizzled-mentor answer to Paul Newman's Doc Hudson in "Cars." None will engender the sort of affection that is second nature in Pixar fare.
As for the globe-spanning cast, they are broadly drawn—and, in some cases, borderline offensive. Still, if you can buy El Chupacabra (Carlos Alazraqui), a chubby Mexican aircraft—imagine Jack Black in "Nacho Libre" with propeller nose—who woos slinky French Canadian she-plane Rochelle (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) with cheesy lines ("Are you tired? Because you've been flying through my mind") and a mariarchi band that performs a slow-dance version of disco anthem "Love Machine," little else that should cause navigational problems. Well, maybe Cedric the Entertainer's crotchety Southern-accented biplane Leadbottom.
There are references to "Cars" (those mooing cow-tipped tractors make an appearance) and in-jokes that those with ages in the double digits might appreciate. When villainous plane Ripslinger (Roger Craig Smith) sees that his iPad-like device (referred to as a Sky Pad) is broken, he shrugs it off: "A new one is coming out in two weeks." Still, considering that the appeal of "Planes" skews rather young, there are taste issues, including a disturbing scene that shows nearly an entire squadron of planes dying in an attack, and Dusty's manly reluctance to gain more speed by losing the dangling crop sprayer attached to his nether regions.
However, if you adjust expectations accordingly and watch the film through the mindset of a child, the minimalism of "Planes" might feel like a refreshing change of pace from the recent onslaught of loud CG spectacles. When a father walking out ahead of me asked his pint-size daughter how she liked the movie, she declared it as "Awesome!" with all the confidence a 5- or 6-year-old can muster. That is the opinion that counts.
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