Crash Landing

voices: Dane Cook,Stacy Keach,Carlos Alazraqui,Priyanka Chopra

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You may want to see this one because of Priyanka Chopra featuring as a pretty,orange plane with a sultry tinkle in her voice,called Ishani. She even flies past Taj Mahal with the hero,Dusty,carried along on a Bollywood song (no,it rests there). But really,even John Lasseter as writer (previously associated with Finding Nemo,Toy Story,Wall-E,Ratatouille and the beautiful short Paperman) can’t save this one.

There can be only so many stories about the underdog aiming for the impossible and getting there,after being stomped on by the big guys and surpassing deathly obstacles along the way. And these have all been done — including Lasseter’s own rat that became a chef,a fish that found its lost son,the robot who found a soulmate,and just last month,a snail who won the Indy 500.

Even by those standards,Planes is a lazy exercise,falling back on all the tried rules of this game,the most tiresome being an amorous Mexican wooing a cold Canadian.

Dusty,a crop duster who wants to win a race across the globe competing against planes better and faster than him,never even encounters the kind of hurdles that would get us rooting for him. The humour is forced — Dusty is “afraid of heights” is an example — the love angles laughable and the climax flat,despite the 3D and the skies where it happens.