PLANE BORING (PLANES)

The end is in sight.

Children are heading back to school after a summer that had more sun than we dared imagine.

And while we will continued to be bombarded in our multiplexes by superheroes and animated family comedies, our cinemas only had to provide shelter for kids from the rain during August.

Normally, you could have relied on Disney to keep parents and children entertained during the damp spells.

But this year animated movies have been one hell of a disappointment.

The minions of 'Despicable Me 2' may have entertained our moppets with their gibberish but its storyline was mediocre at best.

'Epic' may have looked pretty in parts but it was humourless and too preachy. 

I confess I studiously avoided 'The Smurfs 2' but was reliably informed by my wife afterwards that the Cinematic Gods would get their own back for making her go instead with our seven year old.

The Cinematic Gods did get their revenge. It was called 'We're The Millers'.

But the biggest disappointment was 'Monsters University' which failed to match the intelligence and the wit of its predecessor, 'Monsters Inc'.

Now there is a widespread view that Disney-Pixar may have developed the yips when it comes to producing high quality family entertainment.

Those concerns will not be allayed by the latest animated movie to land on our cinema screens.

'Planes' is from the same stable that gave us the rather lacklustre 'Cars' and 'Cars 2'.

Originally conceived as a direct to DVD film, it has been flown into multiplexes in the hope that it can squeeze some more decent box office out of families desperate for light hearted entertainment.

But like an awful lot of direct to DVD movies, it lacks any passion or imagination.

Directed by Klay Hall, it is essentially an underdog film about an Ugly Duckling crop dusting plane, Dusty Crophopper (voiced by stand-up comedian Dane Cook) who dreams of being a racing plane.

His goal is to take part in a glamorous race around the world but initially his dreams are ridiculed by his boss Leadbottom (Cedric the Entertainer), the mechanical truck Dottie (Teri Hatcher of 'Desperate Housewives' fame) and an old navy war plane, Skipper Riley (Stacy Keach). 

Dusty's best friend, a fuel truck Chug (Brad Garrett) is the only one who believes and encourages him to enter a qualifying race in Lincoln, Nebraska where he brushes aside the sneering comments of other competitors and comes agonisingly to qualifying.

Crophopper gets a lucky break when it is revealed the plane that edged him out the glamorous world of racing planes was using illegal fuel.

However Dusty has a serious flaw. He can't stand heights and has to fly low - a flaw which could feasibly cost him his life over the Himalayas or the Pacific.

Cheered on by Chug, Dottie and Skipper back home, he builds up a rapport with his fellow competitors, including a passionate Mexican plane El Chupacabra (Carlos Alazraqui) who is in love with a French-Canadian competitor Rochelle (Julia Louis-Dreyfus from 'Seinfeld' and 'Veep') and the stiff upper lipped British plane Bulldog (John Cleese).

Dusty also falls for a pretty Indian plane, Ishani (Priyanka Chopra).

But his biggest obstacle is the vain, nasty three times champion Ripslinger (Roger Craig Smith) who dismisses Dusty as a farm boy.

The animation is as decent as you'd might expect from Disney Toon Studios.

But the problem is the script, the script, the script.

There is nothing new or innovative in screenwriter Jeffrey M Howard's screenplay and that is despite working from a story conceived by Pixar guru John Lasseter along with Klay Hall.

There is not one laugh and you keep waiting in vain for Hall's film to land at the arrivals gate.

The overall impression the viewer is left with is that this is a cynical attempt by Disney to squeeze a few more dollars out of the so-so 'Cars' franchise.

One can only hope 'Planes' is grounded as a franchise before it is exploited further.

('Planes' opened in UK and Irish cinemas on August 16, 2013. This review originally appeared on Eamonnmallie.com)