Initially planned as a direct to DVD feature, Planes from DisneyToon Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures spins off from Cars, soaring through the clouds and over the seas. Starring Dane Cook as Chopper, a crop duster with dreams of making it big, Roger Craig Smith as Jetslinger, 3 time world champion racer, along a pretty impressive cast including John Cleese, Teri Hatcher and Stacey Keach.

So, the positives. It looks great. The visuals, the races, the sense of speed and motion, are all fantastic. This is a movie that moves, and the great soundtrack complements it perfectly. The voice acting is uniformly great, Cook especially is excellent. I’ll admit to having some initial misgivings about his casting, but I was very impressed with his performance.

The bad. There is nothing new here. At all. If you have watched any plucky underdog story over the past few years, you’ve seen this already. At one point, two characters being listing off other underdog stories and all you do is sit there and think: “Yeah, those movies was better than this.” Throw in ridiculously outdated ethnic stereotypes (the Mexican plane serenades with a mariachi band and flounces around in a matador outfit), and a largely wasted cast (does John Cleese really need to add to the retirement fund at this point?), and you get a massive waste of time.

Up opened with a montage that tugged at the heartstrings and tried (too hard?) to try to make you feel sympathy with the main character. Here we have a pretty intense war flashback, with gunfire, explosions, screams and an impressive body count. But it’s cartoon planes. It’s too much, it’s too weird and insane. Planes just aren’t that easy to humanise, and the whole scene just leaves a bad taste. Introducing genuine tragedy into a kids movie is a tricky line to walk, and they failed miserably here.

Great visuals, great music, but with wasted actors, idiotic ethnic stereotypes, and a story that does nothing, this may be one to skip.

Donal O’Connor