The fact that there’s now a sequel might be confusing for some people, not least the parents who regretted taking their kids along to the lacklustre first instalment, but we all know by now that kids movies aren’t green-lit off the back of critical adoration or positive buzz – it’s about merchandise and marketability. The first is with its story, which trades the underdog-achieves-his-dreams cliché for a moral message about finding joy in something new when life knocks you down. Our hero, Dusty Crophopper (Dane Cook), having become the star racer he set out to be in his first outing, has run into some trouble with his faulty gear-box, which means that to push his engine to its limits, as is required of a racer, he risks crashing. The movie doesn’t shroud it too much – crashing basically translates to dying in this wacky world – and Dusty’s gear-box is pretty clearly a metaphor for disability or debilitating injury. For an otherwise throwaway children’s animation to include such heavy themes, wrapped in a nice journey towards acceptance of certain limitations and finding joy in new dreams, is hugely commendable. With his career as a racer apparently dashed, then, Dusty decides to train as a fire-fighter with the Smokejumpers, a hodgepodge group of crazy characters (and some new additions to the voice cast, of course) that includes grizzled veteran Blade Ranger (Ed Harris). Taking Dusty under his wing, so to speak, Blade’s troubled past is revealed and the tourist lodge they’re tasked with protecting is threatened. The villain in Planes 2 is basically weather, and weather’s capability to produce fire. This isn’t a criticism, as such, as the fire-fighting sequences utilising the magnificence of fire, water and flying are a joy to watch. These sequences get a little repetitive, however, and the film never really gets past the fact that Dusty, as pleasant a protagonist as he is, just isn’t that interesting. The first film was criticised for being aimed solely at kids, with nothing for the parental portion of the audience to latch onto. Fire and Rescue is definitely still a kids movie through and through, and one aimed at under-10s at that, but there are glimmers of that old Pixar/Disney tendency to pepper in adult-skewed jokes. One 80s cop show parody raises a few titters, for example, and in a way that doesn’t exclude younger viewers. Planes: Fire and Rescue is a rare sequel that gets the chance to improve upon the original, meaning among other things that parents can feel good about taking their kids to see it. It’s a film that sets out to do something simple, more or less achieves it, and manages to entertain along the way. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
