While Disney's Planes from personal opinion wasn't particularly good, not a plane wreck but disappointingly lazy, it is much better than this. The two are being compared due to Wings being advertised in a way that viewers immediately think that 'this is a rip-off of Planes.'
The good news is that Wings is certainly not as blatant or as insulting as most animated mock busters are, it's derivative of Cars (like Planes was) but seeing as Wings' release dates predate those for Planes I am not going to be so hasty to call it a rip-off regardless of the advertising. What stops Wings from being rated any less is a few solid character designs, not as creepy or as robotic as feared. Other than that Wings never does take off, and crashes and burns when at its worst.
Most of the animation is not very good. There's worse computer animation out there (even the worst of it is nowhere near Video Brinquedo or Spark Plug Entertainment bad), but apart from the character designs the lack of budget and polish shows in the flat colours, some very stiff movement and framing and less than handsome and polished backgrounds, some of it looking out of sync too and the flying sequences lack energy and are choppily edited. The soundtrack is reasonably pleasant and rousing on its own but doesn't quite work within the film; there are numerous moments in Wings where the music just doesn't fit with the action. Apparently it was different in the original Russian version, and there are times where you can tell that there were changes, especially in the soundtrack, the dialogue and some of the animation, and the original version probably would have fitted better.
In terms of writing Wings fares very poorly. The dialogue plays it far too safe, and lacks any spark, instead being very flat and shallow throughout. It's not insultingly juvenile or over-complicated, it just feels bland, with some of it feeling rambling or not particularly relevant. The story fails to maintain momentum, with its 88 minute running time starting to feel too long even as much as halfway through (Planes' story was very lazy and it was not one of the stronger assets of Cars either, except nowhere near as bad, but the storytelling in Wings is even lazier). Like the dialogue, some parts are played too safe with the flying lacking energy, invention or danger, action is very sedate in the early parts, while the latter half becomes muddled and some of the story felt jumpy and incomplete.
The characters while decently designed are rather cookie-cutter and have little personality or personality to hold one's attention. Dodo comes over as obnoxious, Cyclone is a dull villain who is more of a rival bully sort of character (which doesn't come over convincingly due to the lack of tension between the characters) whose comeuppance is incredibly rushed and the leads are inoffensive but with little to make them stand out. The voice acting is competent (although Rob Schneider really gets on the nerves), but fits in the category of just about getting the job done but with not much to distinguish themselves.
All in all, there's worse to be had, to be sure, than Wings, but it never does take off, feeling too bland, too safe, sometimes muddled and forgettable. 2/10 Bethany Cox
