I have watched the movie several times and saw it in the theatres with my children. After watching the movie again with a focus on looking for stereotypes and "ism's" and then doing some online research, I found that a good deal of the online talk about stereotypes came from reviews of the TRAILER of the movie. This was odd to me. I didn't realize that people reviewed trailers. So in my research I started with watching the trailers and seeing what other reviewers were looking at.
Hollywood.com noted that one of the trailers, of which there are only a few, shows a "Southern yokel leading the cast, backed up by a passionate and poetic Latin lover, a mystical Indian temptress, an uptight and rigid British character, and a quip-snapping African-American forklift. Seems as though the days of Peter Pan's American Indians aren't as far behind us as we might have thought..."
I too noticed those particular stereotypes and would add the following, El Chubacabra is painted like a Mexican Lucha Libre, Rochelle is painted pink, and Ishani is painted with Indian henna designs. Those are just the planes shown in the trailer. There are many other planes in the movie.
So on to the movie itself. The story centers around a group of international planes that come together for a massive race around the world. Each of the planes is drawn to represent it's country of origin and this is where the stereotypes begin to unfold. For example, the British plane is posh and rude with repressed emotions, the Asian planes have eyes that open a little less vertically than the others, and the Mexican plane is large and loud and a hopeless romantic bordering on sexual predator. Variety.com says, "A "Cars" spinoff that seems to have taken an unfortunate detour through "It's A Small World", "Planes" is so overrun with broad cultural stereotypes that it should come with free ethnic-sensitivity training for especially impressionable kids."
There are so many cultural stereotypes in this movie that it goes far beyond what would be considered cute and acceptable for a family movie. By the time EL Chubacabra serenades Rochelle with a makeshift Mariachi band, or when Dusty (the main character) arrives in Asia and flies over a field of cars wearing bamboo hats, the stereotyping has long exceeded it's limits.
With so many cultural stereotypes to choose from, I hadn't noticed the sexist aspects of the movie until I started doing online research. There are 2 main female planes in the movie but both planes are portrayed as objects of lust for the male planes that have much bigger parts. The actual race in "Planes" is dominated by male characters. There is a dream sequence that involves some fighter jets that refer to the slower, less capable planes as "ladies". The female characters are definitely a minority in this movie. Jezebel.com noted that these characters will be reviewed as being "feisty" by most people. She has named these characters that show up in many animated features as "Minority Feisty" which I thought was brilliant!! The Minority Feisty is "rarely a protagonist (and) her power, lines, and screen time are carefully and consistently circumscribed to show that she is not as important as the male star."
As an adult, aware of stereotypes and "ism's", this movie is a hard watch. It may be a good educational tool to watch with your child to later discuss how stereotypes are not always accurate and how we should be sensitive to racism, sexism, etc.. But children learn from what they see over and over again and this movie needs to be a careful exercise for impressionable young children.
