SNEAKS - Mark Reviews Movies

Sneaks, Briarcliff Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 18, 2025

If you get past the cheap-looking and choppy animation of Sneaks, there's still everything else about the movie with which to contend. The story is about a lost shoe trying to find its sister, the other shoe of the pair, among the hustle and bustle of New York City. The shoes talk, of course, because that's what non-speaking things and creatures do in animated movies aimed at kids. This is about the extent of the thinking behind the story, characters, and humor here, too.

Watching co-directors Rob Edwards (who also wrote the screenplay) and Christopher Jenkins' movie is to reconsider most other kid-friendly movies that seem to exist only to sell some specific product, tell the most formulaic story imaginable in the most unimaginative way, and/or fill the story with the most obvious jokes. Compared to this, even the more blatantly cynical, commercialized, and clichéd examples of big-budget animation seem better, if only because there's a basic level of competence behind some element or elements of them.

This movie is really just trying to sell shoes, and it doesn't even do a good job of that. Most of the ones here are of fictional or unspecified brands. Every so often, a familiar logo will appear on a particular shoe, such the all-star character O.G. (voice of Keith David) who represents the starting point of sneakers that are meant to serve a sporting function and have a form worthy of collection.

Otherwise, the background details of shoeboxes with recognizable company names on them only make us wonder if even big-name brands saw through the inherent materialism and tackiness of the material. Companies exist to solely sell products, so just imagine how terrible a movie about talking shoes would have to be for major shoe companies to avoid that kind of big-screen advertising.

The messy, thread-bare story revolves around new shoes Ty (voice of Anthony Mackie) and Maxine (voice of Chloe Bailey), who are won in a raffle at a sneaker convention by high school basketballer Edson (voice of Swae Lee). The narrative starts, by the way, as Edson's story, as a teen with big dreams of becoming a star player, a crush on a girl, a supportive mother, and his first high-school game fast approaching. Soon enough, the kid doesn't matter, and by the end, none of that other stuff, except the game, matters, either.

Instead, we follow Ty, who is stolen with his sister by the Collector (voice of Laurence Fishburne). The Collector, of course, has dedicated his life to collecting the best of the best in sneakers, and this yet-to-be-released pair is his new obsession. He breaks into Edson's apartment and swipes the shoes. Maxine, who believes shoes should be worn and used, wants to return to the kid, but Ty, who wants to remain in pristine condition, wants to stay with the Collector.

While the pair argue the purpose of their existence, Ty ends up on the street and getting the help of JB (voice of Martin Lawrence), a discarded sneaker who envies Ty's rhinestones, to return to the Collector. Meanwhile, Maxine is brought back to the Collector's place, where she tries to figure out how to escape with a bunch of other shoes.

That's basically the plot, and it's mostly an excuse for meeting other generic shoes with bland personalities, some action sequences involving chases and shoes playing basketball and fast rides through the half-rendered streets of the city, and so many shoe-based puns that it's likely possible to determine exactly when Edwards stopped caring about the jokes in the screenwriting process. Without digging too deeply into the movie, it's probably around the fourth or fifth time that there's a play on the word "sole" in place of "soul" or vice versa. At a certain point, one can't tell which word the characters actually mean, if it even matters, why that joke seems to be the one the movie keeps making, and why anyone would imagine a single pun is really a sound foundation for a movie's entire sense of humor.

Nothing else here serves as enough of a distraction from the intrinsic laziness of that kind of thinking. Sneaks looks as shoddy as its story plays. Maybe it's a bit hypocritical to wish the movie was more of a piece advertising for various shoes, but at least then we'd have some nice sneakers to look at.

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