Like a pair of smelly shoes.
There have been various attempts of knock off the “Toy Story” franchise like “Gnomeo & Juliet,” “The Secret Life of Pets,” and “Sausage Party.”And now, “Sneaks” answers the question of what our shoes do when we’re not around. They talk, play basketball with ABC gum, and dream of living a luxury life with a celebrity known as the Collector. And this is me asking: Who cares?
We get a nice opening credits that uses spray painting with music worthy of a basketball movie, and then we get to the animation which is too cheap to Fly Like an Eagle (obligatory “Space Jam” pun), product placements (from Ruffles and Doritos to shoe brands with Shakespearean titles like “Twelfth Nike” or “Much Adidas About Nothing” ), and star-studded voices who sound like they have better things to do. Half of them I’ve never heard of, but the other half I know consist of Anthony Mackie, Martin Lawrence, Laurence Fishburne (who also produces), Keith David, Swae Lee, Chris Paul, Macy Gray, Roddy Ricch, Chloe Bailey, Kiana Lede, and Quavo.
We get Mackie and Bailey voicing a pair of expensive kicks named Ty and Maxine, who are also siblings and end up in the possession of a young raffle winner named Edson (voiced by Lee). The Collector (voiced by Fishburne) steals them for his boss the Forger (voiced by Ricch), who is a human disguising himself as a robot of some sort. And en route, Ty ends up being separated from his sister, and meets a streetwise sneaker named J.B. (voiced by Lawrence), whose plot points are too obvious to anyone over 10.
Another question we should be asking is: How do these shoes can stand the smell of our feet? I mean, Ty does vomit out a sock after being trapped in a smelly gym bag, but that’s all there is to it. The directors Rob Edwards (“The Princess and the Frog,” “Captain America: Brave New World”) and Christopher Jenkins (“Surf’s Up,” “Home”) should know better than to let these shoes resort to obvious and lame jokes and typical product placements. And this would be twice this year that Mackie has an annoying voice acting role, following “The Electric State.”
Put yourself in my shoes. Pun intended. You deserve better animated features than “Sneaks.” I tried to tell you about the much more delightful animated film last March called “The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie.” And I even suggested that “The King of Kings” had the potential to be a good animated film if not for Charles Dickens’ son and his cat trying to add comedic effect. “Sneaks” is probably going hypnotize small kids for about 80 minutes, while their parents will be looking at their phones and watches. I doubt they’re concerned about teaching their kids to tie their shoes at this point.
I need a foot massage after all this.
