Planes Movie Review
I often find in myself certain animal characteristics. In Warhammer I combine the vicious savagery of a tiger with the cleverness of a monkey (tonkey?). When faced with obstacles in life I usually charge forward ignoring them confident in my bull like ability to batter them aside with my horns and thick skull. I tend to look like a giant bear (size, not body hair), am stubborn like a mule, and (apparently) have all the sex appeal of a rancid roadkill armadillo.
When it comes to movie reviews I think the animal I most channel is the coyote. For those of you who did not grow up in an area with coyotes let me tell you they are not dogs or wolves. They are something in between. They can attack when desperate enough but really only go after animals that are mostly dead already. Scavengers, basically. I, like a coyote, often salivate at the sight of a wounded movie that has already failed to meet studio expectations and will in all fairness truly suck. Sure it’s painful to watch but afterwards I have a whole smorgasbord of dead animal parts to fill my critical tummy.
This is why I sometimes go back and see films that have been out for over a month. It has been a little slow (and I think I need to steel myself to see Battle of the Year) so this is the perfect time to drop back and pick up any scraps I missed. Thus we come to Planes. If you were stupid enough to think this film was going to be anything other than Cars with wings then I’m pleased to announce you have won an ocean cruise that starts when you stick your head into your own toilet and flush yourself to Acapulco.
This film wasn’t so awful that I found myself looking for the door to the projection room in order to do bad things to the projectionist, but I was definitely eyeballing the exits. I actually see this film as a sign of the contempt that certain studios have for their fans. It seems to be pretty clearly designed to suck money from the hapless parents of kids while providing nothing in return except 91 minutes of peace and quiet (maybe. Some of the kids in the theater were pretty rambunctious. On a side note, I purposely saw a late showing in order to not be up to my ass in rug rats. Why are you parents taking your children to see a movie at 10pm? Shouldn’t your kids be locked in their sleep cages by then?). When I imagine the executives of certain studios discussing their fans I imagine them treating us like the robots treated humans in the Matrix.
There was one thing that bugged me about this film (and the whole Cars franchise) and about halfway through the film the answer struck me like a tornado touching down in a trailer park. The main character, Dusty Crophopper, is a crop duster (see what they did there? Clever.). He spends all day dusting crops of corn and has done so his entire life. His older buddy has done it for decades. Yet no where do we see anyone capable of eating and digesting the corn. There was some discussion of corn oil being used as a new kind of fuel but it looks like corn has been raised centuries so that is no explanation. Why are they growing corn???
Once I notice that I started seeing a bunch of other stuff. At the airports they kept running into giant commercial passenger planes, complete with the row of windows for passengers to look out of. There is a whole network of passenger planes and yet no sign of passengers. One of Dusty’s sidekicks is selling souvenir whistles, yet most of the cars and planes don’t really have arms to put the whistle up the their grill. Why would anyone need a whistle if you were created with a horn? The mystery of no humans yet stuff that only humans could need really ground on me until finally the answer struck me.
Sentient, autonomous machines? No sign of humans yet the vestigial remnants of human society? Machines mimicking human behavior? All of a sudden I realized that what we are seeing in the world of Cars is the post-human world in the wake of the robot revolution! This is the world after Skynet has won! It’s really the only explanation, and as cute as this movie is I’m sure at some point during his racing Dusty was flying over mass human graves and the broken battlefields filled with bones crushed under mighty robotic war machine treads. Is this really what you want to show your children?
(Obey Robot image courtesy of the Funny Political T Shirts category)
Also, what is the deal with forklifts? You see, cars and planes lack anything resembling limbs, so forklifts are now the only functional working machines in this society, and there are a lot of them. Way more than you would imagine in proportion to other vehicles. I had a job at a warehouse once and while the parking lot had 50-60 cars in it we only had two forklifts. Also, in the movie when you see the viewing stands at the race finish (no double very expensive seats) they are filled with cars and planes but you only see forklifts when it is time to do some form of technical task or labor. Clearly the forklifts represent the post-human proletariat. Karl Marx would have a field day with this movie. Power to the Forklifts! Join the Forklift Revolution! Study the Bourgeois Automobile Intelligentsia’s Methods of Struggle Against the Forklifts!
Anyway, the story. Just rent Cars and stick magnetic wings onto all the characters if you want to skip my recap. Good to go. Dusty Crophopper (Dane Cook-Mr. Brooks, Dan in Real Life, My Best Friends Girl) is a crop duster who dreams of being a racer. He is aided by his dopey gas truck buddy Chug (Brad Garrett-Everybody Loves Raymond, Ratatouille, Finding Nemo) and his forklift mechanic (and possible revolutionary. The concept is never really explored) Dottie (Teri Hatcher-Tomorrow Never Dies, Coroline, Desperate Housewives). He enters a local qualifying race and barely squeaks in. He seeks training from local war hero Skipper (Stacy Keach-American History X, the Bourne Identity, the New Mike Hammer), a Corsair (which, in my opinion, was the coolest looking aircraft of WWII) with a troubled past.
Honestly just grab the kids movie cliche checklist and start checking stuff off. Dusty makes friends with a Mexican lucha libre plane (Carlos Alazraqui-Happy Feet, Reno 911, Toy Story 3) who acts as his goofy sidekick in the air. The Mexican also has a sub plot of unrequited love with a Canadian plane (Julia Louis-Dreyfus-Seinfeld, a Bug’s Life, Deconstructing Harry). There’s the obligatory love interest for Dusty (can someone tell me how planes actually have sex, and to what purpose? I’m honestly curious) in the slightly-less-than-racially-sensitive plane Ishani (Priyanka Chopra-Fashion, Barfi, Don!). There’s the stuffy British guy (John Cleese-A Fish Called Wanda, Monty Python) just in case you hadn’t quite filled up on stereotypes yet, and of course the obligatory reigning champion and all around jerk to what he considers a lower class working plane (aha! More less-than subtle Communist rhetoric!) Ripslinger (Roger Craig Smith-Wreck It Ralph, Resident Evil 5, Assassins Creed).
Just write it out the story your head before I type this. Dusty starts off sucking, but over time starts winning. Ripslinger feels threatened by him and does him dirty with the help of his two hench-planes Echo and Bravo (obviously counter-revolutionaries, the both of them. Anthony Edwards-Zodiac, Top Gun, Revenge of the Nerds and Val Kilmer(WTF???)-Real Genius, Heat, Top Gun). I don’t want to spoil the ending but if you thought you were going to be surprised, prepare to be surprised.
As per usual for kids movies I won’t dissect it with my stars/black hole rating system. I judge these films by how the kids in the audience are reacting and to be honest, it seems like a lot of the kids were more than a little bored. They were climbing all over the seats and running up and down the stairs more than I see in most kids films. I guess I’m going to have to unrecommended this film for your beloved tikes. They will get as much or more out of a viewing of Cars at home and you yourself won’t be subjected to this mind numbing cliche pap.
So I guess that’s it for this movie. Based on the trend I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we see another movie set in the Cars world involving some other type of working class vehicle that dreams of being a racer. Perhaps a tug boat or garbage scow in a movie with some kind of watercraft related name? However, there is some promise for this franchise in that I would really, really want to see either the Cars prequel featuring the destruction of the human race or the film of the inevitable forklift revolution (Lifts?). I dream of a world where studios develop the sack to take fun chances like that (also a world where I’m surrounded by hot women who play Warhammer topless and there is bacon on every form of food).
Thanks for reading. There are a couple more movies out this week that I will try to grind through but I am not looking forward to them. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Post comments on this movie or my review here, or send me an email at [email protected] if you have an off topic question or suggestion. Talk to you soon. Have a great day.
Dave
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