Planes: High on hope

Planes

Both this week’s Hollywood releases have an India connect. Jobs had Ashton Kutcher looking quite dazed on his trip to India as the Apple founder finding himself and Planes has Priyanka Chopra giving voice to Ishani, the pan Asian racing champ from India. Planes from Pixar is written by John Lasseter, who has written and directed classics such as Toy Story and A Bug’s Life.

If you go into this movie with zero expectations, you will be happily surprised with this modest tale. There is this crop duster plane that wants to be a racer and trains to take part in the Wings Across the World race where planes from all over the globe participate in a gruelling race. Everything is super predictable and rather comforting for that. So there is the underdog, the reclusive warplane that is the guru, the mean plane, the cute one, the Casanova and the femme fatale. There are no surprises in the plot either with Dusty’s unexpected qualification, important life lessons learnt, humour and thrills.

Planes scores, thanks to its humble aspirations and some eye-popping animation of the aerial sequences. The voice cast is competent. PC sounds cute and John Cleese is hilarious as ever as Bulldog, the British plane and, yes, don’t expect racial subtleties from this film.

Genre: Animation adventure

Director: Klay Hall

Voice Cast: Dane Cook, Stacy Keach, Priyanka Chopra, Brad Garrett, Cedric the Entertainer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Roger Craig Smith, John Cleese, Carlos Alazraqui

Storyline: A crop duster wants to be a racer and takes part in a championship.

Bottomline: Familiar underdog tale, with some amazing aerial animation sequences.