In the early part of the 21st Century, DisneyToon Studios created direct to video sequels to several of Disney’s most beloved animated classics, including such horrific features like “The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride” and “The Little Mermaid II: Return To The Sea.” All of these featured poor scripting, shoddy animation and an obvious disrespect to the beloved animated features they were following. This trend was discontinued in 2006, with DisneyToon studios only making “Tinker Bell” movies for the time being. Now, they finally get a new release, “Planes,” which is a spin-off of the beloved PIXAR franchise “Cars,” that allows them to continue their tradition of creating horrible continuations to good films.

Dusty Crophopper (Dane Cook, in his much anticipated return to the big screen) is a crop duster who dreams of racing. With the help of friends Chug (Brad Garrett) and Dottie (Teri Hatcher), he ends up making it into a race around the world, the winner of which will gain glory and fame. The only problem is he’s afraid of heights (cue record scratch). The never ending suspense leaves the entire audience wondering “How on Earth was this deemed fit to be released to human beings?”

The true downfall of “Planes” comes in its lack of anything that would make a movie worthwhile: lovable characters, laughs, drama. The protagonist here has a voice that’s both whiny and hate-able- the kind that’s more likely to drum up irritation than sympathy. To boot, he’s surrounded by racers from different corners of the globe, some from India, some from England, etc. What could’ve been a groundbreaking moment to introduce new cultures and ideals in a mainstream animated motion picture winds up being pointless; all these characters are so shallow they make the stereotypes presented in a Family Guy cutaway gag look nuanced. To boot, very few of these supporting characters even do anything important to the plot, they just pop up, say a line of dialogue or two and then leave, reducing the supporting cast to being little more than a blatant toy ad.

Perhaps the most laughable aspect of the film is its last minute attempt to inject emotion. (SPOILER ALERT for those who have an IQ in the negative number range and can’t predict this from a mile away). Dusty’s trainer, Skipper, who is always talking about his war history, is revealed to have lied about his war past. In reality, he only did a single mission due to him accidentally getting his whole squadron killed in combat. After an entire movie that’s been relentlessly bland and dull, this schizophrenically violent and dark scene is jolting and almost humorously out of place (it’s like if someone put a scene from “Reservoir Dogs” into an episode of “Teletubbies”) Such a blatant example of an inconsistent tone is only a piece of the almost beautiful awfulness of “Planes,” an hour and a half long toy commercial that is a wasteland of atrocious characters, no laughs and some pretty terrible voice acting (at least we got a movie that brought Sinbad, John Cleese and Julia Louis Dreyfus together). A film as abominable and stupid as it is boring, not only does “Planes” not soar, it never finds its way to the runway.