4/10
Still not an improvement from the original movie
28 July 2014
Warning: Spoilers
So after winning the Wings Around the World, it turns out that Dusty's gearbox gets faulty and Dottie the mechanic warns him not to red light his engine or he'll crash. One day a fire occurs in Dusty's hometown airport and the government finds the airport doesn't have adequate resource for handling fire accidents. After tidying up, the only thing left to have is another member for the fire fighter crew. Dusty volunteers and is then sent to get his certification with Blade Ranger in Piston Peak. Blade teaches all the firefighting technical things, but Dusty still holds back his top speed in fear of red lighting and crashing. It's then revealed that Blade was a TV star but he got into fire fighting after he lost his partner at a shooting accident. Meanwhile, the superintendent of the Piston Peaks resort is having a party at his new lodge and avoiding the wildfire danger.

As the rescue attempt goes on, Dusty goes his own way and disobeys Blade's orders repeatedly, resulting in the both of them stuck in their own ways and they have to et the fire burn through as they take cover. Blade shields Dusty from the fire thus he 's weakened and is downed as he tries take off. In Blade's absence and under the push of situation Dusty is then able to red light his engine. At the same time Blade, still injured but pushes on, helps Dusty to save the old RVs trapped in the same bridge where Blade teaches Dusty low flying. But immediately after red lighting, Dusty's engine stops mid air and he crashes. After five days of treatment, Maru, Blade's mechanic succeeded in repairing Dusty, even repairing his faulty gearbox. Thus Prop Junctin is reopened with Dusty as the new fire fighter member.

It's bad that after the flop of the first movie, the development team didn't really learn a good lesson from it and cook up a better movie in this one. The story moves from a classic of hope for a competition's underdog to an even more common one of a newbie ended up being a hero. There's no twist offered in any of the story element, just all those predictable story developments.

What's even worse than the first movie is that this time there's less laughable jokes around. Considering that the story changes from a competition into one more seriously toned story of saving lives, yet it shouldn't be a reason to cut back on the jokes. Besides, it's an animation after all.

And also, again, there's no cameo or any sort of appearance of the characters from the original Cars world to really connect the two franchise together, when on the other hand the movie's story has so many spots to do so nicely and smoothly. For example, when Dusty travels from Prop Junction to Piston Peaks, he could've been shown as flying pass Radiator Springs. But no, the developers didn't bother to do it.

My final say is that Planes: Fire and Rescue (2014) gets a 4 out 10 score from me, the same score I gave the original Planes (2013). It's an entertainment, a decent one at least, but I think we can all find better animations than this one.
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