Planes: Fire and Rescue

Because Disney did so well with the last one

Our story begins shortly after the last movie, Dusty Crophopper (Dane Cook...I know right?) is living his life as a racing champion. All seems to be going well for him until a catastrophic engine failure leads to him not being able to race anymore. During a fit of nonacceptance he goes off and tries to prove he can still race, it turns out he can't and starts a fire. The old fire truck Mayday (Hal Holbrook) they keep at the airfield just barely stops the blaze, but inadvertently triggers the safety inspectors to come in and take a look at the airfield. The safety inspector issues two orders, one is that the old fire truck needs to be brought up to the day's standards, and the second is that they need a second firefighter. So Dusty volunteers to go get certified and meets a brand new team dedicated to stopping fires. It is comprised of an old helicopter that used to be a big name (because the last movie didn't have enough of that) named Blade (Ed Harris), one of Dusty's crazed fan girls Lil' Dipper (Julie Brown), and Disney's newest racism complaint Windlifter (Wes Studi, at least they have a seemingly legit Native American this time). Dusty must try to get past his newest problem in order to save the farm...I mean "airfield."

Let me get one thing straight with you all. I have the utmost respect for firefighters, cops and genuine lifesavers all around, but when movies like this try to "pay respect" to them while also turning a profit in the most basic way I don't feel bad about trashing the film. This movie is a sequel to a failed spin off, of a horrible concept by Disney, we knew what we were getting ourselves into. This is just Disney's way of getting the bull out until we get actual interesting projects like 'The Incredibles 2" and  "Big Hero 6." Do I wish I didn't have to sit through Disney's profit schemes? Of course I do, but I had to see this anyway. So let us get started.

I found out after cars that I can absolutely not try to make since out of the biology of these characters, I will go insane. So taking away that bit of forgotten story line, I am going to talk about the rest of this "story." It is the same old tired story we are used to seeing from Disney movies. Character A has to do task B in order to stop problem C...while encountering problems D through Z in the process. The first story was bad, but a good effort, basically trying to send a moral that "you are more than your limits" or some non-sense. This moral is "getting back on the horse after you were kicked off" among others. It is a good moral, but delivered horrendously. Everything is predictable, and usually with a movie like this I am not expecting it to be the next big reveal type of movie, but the plot devices used here are so recycled by Disney I am surprised they haven't disintegrated from over use. The old helicopter with a tragic story is a great example since it is a character arc seen in "Cars" and "Planes" before. When you are pulling story line and character development from two movies in the same movie universe, you have officially run out of ideas for this series and need to let it die. The only saving grace I saw in this movie was from the psycho fangirl, Lil' Dipper. She could be a bit annoying, but she grew on me. I am pretty sure Disney might have been looking at a couple of it's own fans when creating the concept, which worked because she was great.

Let's go over the acting. I am glad to see that Dane Cook's career has come to acting in movies like this, it feels like the cosmic balance trying to right itself. He didn't add anything to the movie unsurprisingly, making the entire film suffer more. He was just so bland, like you could hear the hurt in his voice from wondering how his career came down to this. The rest of the cast seemed pretty lethargic as well. You could hear the disdain in Wes Studi's voice for playing yet another stereotypical Native American. Ed Harris sounded bored and Hal Holbrook did okay, but I doubt he knew where he was during the recording session. The saving grace among the voices was Julie Brown, she sounded like she genuinely had fun with her character and did her best to add life to the cast.

The thing that irritated me the most about this movie is that I can usually gauge a movie's target audience by the reaction of the audience in the theater. Needless to say I was surrounded by children with their parents for this movie, and none of them reacted to anything. Usually, during animated movies I can here at least a couple of exclamations from the kids, but this movie looked like it was putting them all to sleep. What is worse is that they all seemed irritated when they left the theater. This movie apparently appeals to no audience. When you are an animated movie that fails to capture children you have failed at the most basic part of animation. Congratulations. 

Final Verdict: Don't do it It seems I am giving a lot of these scores out lately, which is unfortunate but not unforeseen. The first movie was serviceable as a money grabbing spin off that at least made children happy, this just didn't try.