Review of Planes: Fire & Rescue (2014) by Carlotta 4 — 23 Dec 2018

Not too bad, not too good. My main complaint for the film would be that everyone talks WAY too fast and almost never stop speaking--the film could use a lot more quiet moments to let character emotions sink in, but it feels like it's almost afraid to do so. I had to watch it two or three times before I even picked up on all the lines (some of those are REALLY crammed in there!).

Second main complaint would be the protagonist: I kind of feel like he was bland and the film would have been stronger with some other random plane taking the wheel. The gearbox element was fine and drove the plot forward but there was no need to tangeantally tie this into the previous "planes" movie with the racing airplane... it was really unrelated and tacked on. As such the protagonist was easily the least interesting character in the film. Blazin' Bill and the rest of his crew (minus annoying yellow plane) were fine, though, it would have been interesting to see them developed further.

But it's okay for a "kid's film." The fire visuals are pretty cool, and even if you know where the plot is going it's not handled awfully. If your kid likes airplanes or fire they'll probably have a good time and I think that's all the film was really trying to do anyway. I wouldn't deliberately turn it on but I'm not rolling my eyes through it wanting to turn it off when it does come on, either.