Dusty Crophopper is a crop-dusting plane who dreams of racing. He is also terrified of flying high. That tension drives the setup of Planes, a 2013 spin-off of Pixar’s Cars franchise. The problem is that the setup is better than almost everything that follows it.
Trailer, via Stream Movie Trailers.
Dusty’s Big Dream
Dusty works at a cornfield in Propwash Junction, Minnesota. He spends his free time practicing aerobatics, even though his boss, Leadbottom, and his mechanic friend Dottie think he is wasting his time. His fuel truck friend, Chug, supports him instead. Together they train for qualifiers for the Wings Around the Globe Rally.
On the night before the qualifiers, Dusty asks Skipper Riley, an elderly navy war plane, to teach him to fly well. Skipper declines. The next day, Dusty barely qualifies on a legal technicality. Skipper eventually agrees to mentor him, only to discover that Dusty has a fear of heights.
The Cast That Isn’t Used
The voice cast is strong. Dane Cook voices Dusty, and the supporting cast includes Val Kilmer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Brad Garrett, Teri Hatcher, John Cleese, Anthony Edwards, Sinbad, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Stacy Keach as Skipper. The film also features Gabriel Iglesias as both Ned and Zed, and Carlos Alazraqui as El Chupacabra.
None of it matters. The script gives most of these actors nothing to work with. The jokes land with a thud, and the emotional beats feel forced rather than earned.
The Race Around the Globe
The bulk of the film follows Dusty through the Wings Around the Globe Rally. Each leg of the race brings a new obstacle:
| Leg | Location | Conflict |
|---|---|---|
| First | New York to Iceland | Dusty refuses to fly high and finishes last |
| Second | New York to Germany | Dusty saves Bulldog from a crash, finishing last again |
| Third | Agra, India | Ishani invites Dusty to fly around the Taj Mahal |
| Fourth | Himalayas | Dusty follows railroad tracks through the mountains |
| Fifth | Upper Mustang, Nepal | Ishani betrays Dusty for a propeller from Ripslinger’s team |
The betrayal is the film’s climax. Ishani sets Dusty up to win a leg in Nepal, but she does it to get a new propeller from Ripslinger’s team. Dusty finds out and shuns her.
A Betrayal That Changes Nothing
The betrayal should hurt. It doesn’t. The film treats it as a setback rather than a wound. Dusty gets back in the race, and the story moves on.
The fifth leg is over the Hump, the mountains between Nepal and India. Dusty flies through a tunnel and takes first place in Upper Mustang. The moment should be triumphant. Instead, it feels hollow.
The People Around Dusty
The other racers are mostly interchangeable. El Chupacabra falls in love with Rochelle, a French-Canadian racer, but can’t win her over. Ripslinger, the three-time defending champion, dismisses Dusty. Bulldog gains Dusty’s respect after Dusty saves him from a crash.
None of these relationships goes anywhere. They exist to fill space between races, not to drive the story forward.
Why This Spin-Off Works
Planes was developed from a concept created by John Lasseter. The writers made a conscious effort to avoid remaking Cars in a new setting, while reusing Keach and Danny Mann’s characters from the Cars Toons short “Air Mater.” The production team interviewed pilots of plane types included in the film to get details right.
That attention to detail is the film’s best feature. The planes look distinct, the skies feel lived-in, and the racing sequences have a sense of weight and speed that the story never matches.
What Doesn’t Work
The humor misses almost every time. A joke about Dusty being a crop duster in a race is supposed to be funny. It isn’t. The film leans on repetition — Dusty’s fear of heights, the same jokes about his size, the same save-a-racer beats — instead of building to anything new.
The romance between Dusty and Ishani is underwritten. Their chemistry is never established, so their betrayal lands as a twist without stakes. The film expects the audience to care because it says the word “love” a few times.
The Premiere and Its Release
Planes premiered on August 2, 2013, at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, a gathering of aviation enthusiasts. It was initially intended to be released as a direct-to-video film. Instead, it opened theatrically on August 9, 2013.
That decision was the right one for the wrong reasons. The film was not ready for theaters. It was not ready for anyone.
A Score That Reflects the Film
The musical score was composed by Mark Mancina. Prana Studios provided work on visual effects, animation and compositing. The credits also include Jon Cryer, who was initially announced as the voice of Dusty before being replaced by Cook. Cryer received credit on the film for “additional story material.”
None of that changes the final product. Planes is a film that knows how to look at planes and doesn’t know how to look at people.
2.6 out of 10.
The premise is good. The execution is not. Dusty deserves better than this.
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