Planes

In 2013, DisneyToon produced a spin-off of Pixar’s Cars franchise, titled Planes. Starring Dane Cook, Stacy Keach, Priyanka Chopra, Brad Garrett, Cedric the Entertainer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Roger Craig Smith, John Cleese, Carlos Alazraqui, Val Kilmer, and Anthony Edwards, it grossed $219.8 million.

A cropduster working in a cornfield, Dusty Crophopper (Cook) practices aerobatic maneuvers in his spare time and dreams of becoming racer. Trained by a reclusive navy war plane named Skipper Riley (Keach) he trains to fly in the Wings Across the Globe race.

Planes is unique in that it’s in the same world as Cars, but is at the same time distinct and not a rehash of the film it spins off of. Dusty has to overcome his shortcomings of not being built to race in a very short time span. And not only does he do it, but eventually wins the respect of most of the racers he is flying with. It showcase’s Dusty’s character in how he goes about doing it: saving another racer and coming in last, having surprising determination and just being an all-around nice guy.

And the variedness of the race is also pretty interesting. Each leg is a different obstacle, such as high flying over the Himalayas, relying on GPS over the Pacific and maneuvering through the cold on the way to Iceland.

But while it’s a fun movie with a pretty good plot, it’s obvious that it was originally meant to be straight to video, but was given a few extra bucks to make it have a theatrical release. The writing is on par with many of the better direct to video sequels Disney put out and should have gone through a couple rewrites before it really went into production.

It’s underwhelming, but didn’t have to be.

#83