"Planes: Fire and Rescue", a movie aimed squarely at a child audience, opens with a dedication to those who risk their lives fighting fires. Both the children and the firefighters deserve better than this film which wouldn't have even passed muster as a straight to DVD release.
In previous reviews I have accused films of feeling more like television movies than genuine theatrical releases. This film takes that to a whole new level. It doesn't even feel like a TV movie, but rather a single, half hour (22 minutes without commercials) television series episode stretched out to 84 minutes, blessedly short as far as movies go, but it sure didn't feel short while I was watching it. Even with the extended runtime, each of the new characters introduced gets no more development than you'd expect from a guest star character in a one-off episode. Making characters fit a specific archetype can assist the audience with quickly getting to know the character, but when they are never developed or given a single trait outside of that prescribed "type", they fail to truly be characters at all. The plot is just as thin as its characters, not offering a single unexpected moment. It takes every beat you're expecting on its way to a conclusion you could see coming before you bought your ticket. If it only took 22 minutes to get there, that would be one thing. Stretched out to this length, though, it's a colossal waste of time.
Even if this were edited down to the length of a television episode, it would be an average episode at best. Better to find a good show and watch four episodes in the time it would take to slog your way through this. The one plus I will give this movie is that it looks like it probably has some decent 3D effects. I saw it in 2D, but there were enough moments where the foreground and background were utilized to create a good sense of depth that would probably translate well to 3D. Unfortunately, in the service of a story so ineptly told, what's the point?
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