Air Mater

As I have stated, I enjoy Cars and Mater is one of my favorite Pixar characters and in the past during Automobile Month,  I reviewed the Cars Toon short,  Mater Private Eye and I enjoyed that short immensely.  Well today I take a look at another Cars Toon as I review Air Mater.   Now I won't hide the fact that this short serves as a backdoor pilot for the spin off series, Planes.  Which after seeing the trailer doesn't give me much hope.  With that out of the way, let's start the review.

The Plot

As with most  of the Cars Toons,   we see Mater doing something and then McQueen asks him about it and Mater goes into his long story about how he used be etc etc.  Eventually ending with "Don't your remember, you were there".   Admittedly,  the setup is the same in each of these shorts and depending on the story it can either aid or hinder the story.  With Mater Private Eye, which I consider the best out all of these, it aided immensely but at the same time felt unneeded. Here though while it did aid the story, there wasn't much to work off of because truthfully the story wasn't that exciting.  Mater goes to a town of planes and sees some stunt planes flying.   He thinks that is really cool and then he sees a flying school and decides to take flying lessons and he is able to fly after only one lesson.  I love Mater and these stories are fun but at times with this short, it was hard to suspend disbelief not because Mater's a car but rather he was able to fly after only one lesson. I know, I know I picked the oddest things to get hung up on but that just seems odd.

Characters

Just as with my Mater Private Eye review, I won't be listing the voice actors but I do know for a fact that Larry The Cable Guy does reprise his role as Mater.  Also unlike Private Eye, there is no villain,  it will be broken up into Main and Supporting. 

Main Character

Mater

  

In this short,  Mater kinda feels like a blank slate where any type of story could be thrust upon him and it could stick.  Though at times, it feels as though any character could be used in Mater's spot and it would be the same story. I already went over why Mater decides to learn to fly in the plot and really other than that, Mater isn't that interesting in this short.

Supporting Characters

Skipper

As stated, Mater goes to a flying school to learn how to fly.  Here's his instructor, Skipper. What is there to say about this character?  He was there, he took up space on the screen.  Seriously,  that's the best way to describe all of the characters in this film, they are just there. They have no defining personalities and the ones that had a semblance of a personality, we're either not that interesting or underplayed.  

Sparky

Once again, we have another characters that fills up space on screen.  Look don't get me wrong, the returning characters are okay but the new characters are kinda meh.   Again with this character, there isn't much to him and I know that a character can be given an engaging personality in a short, just go back and watch any of the classic Disney shorts or Mater Private Eye from this series, where the new characters almost outshined the returning. Sparky is Skipper's assistant and  yeah, that sums him up well.  There's really nothing else to this character.

The Falcon Hawks

The Falcon Hawks are the stunt team that inspire Mater to learn how to fly.  I know they are based on a real team of stunt pilots but I can't think of the name that and the first time I saw them I thought of Southwest Airlines, even though their color schemes don't match up. My mind goes to the oddest places when watching these shorts. Anyways back on topic, their characters that fly and they are a stunt team that is putting a a stunt show.  Which Mater fills in for one of the planes as he sprained his wing and yes Mater does get a new paint job for this sequence looking a little something like this...

Okay, admittedly that is pretty cool but that doesn't save this short.  

My Final Thoughts

To be honest, this short was bit of a disappointment. I mean maybe I'm holding it up to standards that it can't attain but Pixar does work on these shorts and they usually produce quality material with these shorts. Though to be fair  this was produced by Pixar Canada and this is the first thing they have produced. Well I hate saying this but they left me underwhelmed.  As stated in the past I like Cars and even Cars 2, I can see why people might not like it but this is the first time that that anything with the characters of  Cars has disappointed me.  That's the thing, I didn't hate this but rather I was disappointed because I saw poentinal but the characters they had weren't good enough.  If had to describe this short in one word, I think you know what it would, disappointing and really that's heartbreaking to say considering I rank Mater as one of my favorite Pixar characters alongside RC and Woody.  The other problem, I had this short is that it was glaringly obvious that this short was meant to serve as a backdoor pilot for the Planes spin off and while that normally wouldn't bug me, it does here because if these are the characters in the Planes spin off, it is going to be one very boring spin off series and around that same token, this is the first short that felt more like a direct to DVD sequel which equates to lesser quality.  Folks,  I hate saying this about anything Mater is in but it's best to skip this short.