Taking into account everything we’ve seen of Disney’s upcoming Cars spinoff Planes, there doesn’t seem to be any decent reason for adults without children to pre-emptively place their hands on their wallets. Above is the first full-length trailer for the film, thanks to Moviefone, and if it does anything, it makes 3D glasses with attached earplugs look like a pretty great idea.
As with the purely visual teaser trailer Disney released a couple of weeks ago, the animation during the flight-filled scenes looks great; and even if the animation style is still way too cartoonish, at least the film will have a larger-than-average scope and some pretty dazzling effects work to go along with its all-star cast and drab one-liners. One of the characters defends calling Old Yeller an underdog story because there is a dog in it. Jeffrey M. Howard’s screenplay hopefully has a few zingers that are more memorable.
Beyond the generic dialogue shown here, what bothers me is the film’s premise is all about Dusty Crophopper (Dane Cook) and how his friends help him overcome his horrible fear of heights so that he can compete in this elite and highly popular air race against a bunch of other more talented planes. Yet less than a third of the way through this preview, he’s already way past his fear and is ready for the big leagues. And unless this is the most non-formulaic Disney movie ever, Dusty is going to win that competition. So where’s the story?
Planes boasts a huge cast of vehicular voiceovers, including those of Stacy Keach, Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards, Brad Garrett, Teri Hatcher, John Cleese, Cedric the Entertainer, Carlos Alazraqui and Brent Musburger. It will be released theatrically in 3D and 2D on August 9, 2013, and my guess is it’ll be playing in airplanes before the end of the year.
