Review of Planes (2012) by Lourens D — 07 Dec 2013

Pixar was known for high quality films in every way and I was a big fan.

The stories was so well crafted that it presented adult issues such as growing old (eg Toy Story 2) in such a way that even children could enjoy it. Those were true all family films and even my teenagers love watching them. Characters were well developed, storylines was origional and well constructed.

In many ways Pixar set the standard that other companies struggled to achieve.

Things have changed. This film is no longer aimed at a broad audience.

In Fact - it should have been called rails. The story runs like every other hollywood production on well predictable railroad tracks. The underdog, small town boy makes big in the super professional league going from nobody to grand champion in one season blah, blah, blah. Seen it all, heard it all. Done to death. Come on Disney! There is more than one plot out there!

The acting is uninspired, stock Disney Channel fare and the humour is not worth talking about. Not if you are older than 3 years. End result is that one has no empathy for any of the characters and the audience is quickly bored.

Even the animation has suffered. The film seems to lack that final layer of rendering that brought so much detail, grit and real life to Cars. It looks as if the studio tried to save on production time by leaving away the last levels of detail. It has a clean plastic like feel reminiscent of Bug's life and looks no better than the current crop of cheap and nasty 3d Animation programs on Television. In fact, this film should never have reached the theatres but have gone the "straight to DVD" route.

Once again Disney proves that their involvement is guaranteed to take a good product and turn it into rubbish. It is almost as if Disney has an Anti-Midas ability. Anything they touch turns to lead. The fact that they are buying up studios like Pixar in an attempt to bring some life into the sagging ship proves beyond doubt that Disney is no longer able to produce anything worth while on their own. So - no more Pixar / John Lasseter movies for me. I am saddened to say that Pixar has lost it's place of glory on the podium of excellent Animation. Illumination Entertainment has far outstripped Pixar with their follow up movie - Despicable Me 2. That's the way to do a follow up.

Avoid this film unless your kids are 2-6 years old.