3-D 'Planes': Dull, dull, dull
Disney's tedious animated movie "Planes" seems designed to make "Cars 2" look less bad by comparison.
YOU'RE GOING to leave "Planes" wishing the title referred to something comparatively thrilling, like geometry.
Instead, it's Disney's airborne knock-off of "Cars 2," a drab follow-your-dreams yarn about a crop-dusting airplane (voice of Dane Cook) who wants to be a racer.
Dusty is a farmboy who fantasizes about winning an international racing competition, but he's underpowered and he needs training - which he gets from a gruff-but-lovable WWII fighter named Skipper (Stacy Keach).
Dusty enters an around-the-world race, featuring an unimaginative roster of Indian, Mexican and British caricatures. And the race, like the mechanical plot of "Cars 2," seems designed mainly to hit important foreign box-office markets.
There are one or two sequences here with visual impact - Dusty meeting a train at the end of a Himalayan tunnel, soaring to a place that is either Tibet or heaven.
Mostly though, "Planes" is anything but heavenly. The 3-D animation is technically proficient, but shapes and colors seem to have wandered in from a straight-to-video installment of "Veggie Tales." The tedious story is populated with characters you have a hard time remembering half a minute after you've staggered sleepily out of the theater.