Planes

Gnomeo and Juliet. Escape From Planet Earth. Frankenweenie. Pirates! Band of Misfits. ParaNorman. 9. Fantastic Mr. Fox. The Tale of Despereaux.

What do all of those films have in common? No, it's not director. It's not studio. It's not even quality of the films. 

All of those movies are animated films shot for under $60 million dollars...and they still looked better than this film.

There are two misconceptions about this film. One, that it is a Pixar film. Two, that it is a Walt Disney Animation Studios film, the animators that gave us Wreck It Ralph, Tangled, essentially every well known non-Pixar film. No, this was made by DisneyToon studios. You may remember them from 2005's Pooh's Heffalump Movie. What have they done since then? Tinkerbell movies. A prequel to The Little Mermaid. Cinderella III. Brother Bear 2. See the pattern? That's right. This studio only makes straight to DVD Disney sequels. Didn't Stewie ban those on Family Guy?

This film was in fact supposed to be direct to DVD/bluray before it was decided it would be profitable enough to put in theaters. What a mistake. First of all the film is not doing nearly as well as anticipated, pulling in only 25 million on its opening weekend. But if there's one enormous downfall to this movie, it's absolutely the look. You can't go halfway with quality in animation anymore. And for a movie "above the world of cars", it sure didn't have the sleek, cool look of the first two movies. Colors were muted, there was very little glisten to the metals of the planes. Grasses and rocks looked smooth, untextured, boring. These aren't things I should ever associate with Disney, especially after Wreck It Ralph fresh in my mind.

The story is an absolute mess. At no point do we get to know Dusty. At no point do we really care. The movie focuses around a race around the world in seven segments (I think it was seven). This leads to just pointless race shot to pointless race shot, some of the segments no longer than a minute or two. It's terrible story telling. And then, amidst all of this race overload, race after race after race with no care given to the challenges individually, suddenly we find ourselves in a WWII war story involving a bad decision made by a squad lead that resulted in - wait, what?! We go from a silly racing planes movie with no drama at all to a war story?! Erm...

What about the characters? DEAR. GOD. They are SO insulting! The Mexican plane named "Chupacabra" is obviously insulting. German characters pop in later and are all perpetually angry and forceful. There is one group of Tibetan Forklift monks (yes, really) that are HORRIBLY racist. It really makes you feel uncomfortable - I definitely don't want my kids exposed to this.

Racist, bland looking, confusing, and WWII destruction? I think it's safe to say this is one to skip...

Rank - 1/5