Sneakerella
DISNEY+A pretty poor riff on Cinderella, obviously, that sees the lead turn from ball-going elegance to sneaker-infused pursuits. Sneakerella is that bitter modernisation that corporate Disney are ploughing through with. Another setlist of pop-variety content that will placate audiences not with talent or skill but with recognisable, identifiable tropes of a genre that has coerced children into dreaming big. At least Sneakerella has some charm to it, some variance to the usual fodder that is thrown onto Disney+ in this seemingly living and breathing New York City variation. Can the perfect pair of sneakers make the world of difference? The natural comparison is Air Jordans, but there is no telling whether a pair of those would make someone dance through the streets to a mandatory dance number.
Dance the night away, why not. What is strange about these moments is that they take precedence over dialogue and story. It is more important for director Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum to document a track presumably called Kicks (considering that is the frequent line used throughout) than it is to showcase a character with depth beyond owning shoes. Camera trickery used as a profiling of some fairly unimpressive shoes and a twisted number of sudden dance routines. They add nothing to Chosen Jacobs’ leading role, which seems more dependent on the fairly underwhelming special effects and dance routines than he is on the actual plot of Sneakerella. What struggles to come through often with features on a similar wavelength to Sneakerella are its larger-than-life characters being nothing more than one-note jokes with a personality thinly layered over the top.
A store employee observing nothing but terrible karate jokes, the nerd character that wears glasses and a horrible jumper. Another Cinderella adaptation surely was not needed, especially when the changes made are solely that of shoes, a desire for shoes and the need to create shoes. They’ve gone shoe mad, and more maddening than that is the continued reliance on a poor opening track, displayed on the soundtrack as filler rather than feature. Devyn Nekoda features as the obvious supporting part, best friend role and does little to buoy the hidden doors and desire to create and change that Jacobs tries to present. Sneakerella is a thinly-veiled and dull recreation of a classic. Can it even be called a recreation when the ball has been replaced by shoes and the villains replaced by honest, underwhelming examples of stress in the real world?
There is something within Sneakerella that will certainly connect with a younger audience. Or at least, it would have had it been a half-hour shorter. The flair for creativity, the need to create and the vision of a future are well documented but ruined by flashy and frequent flourishes of unnecessary camera movement and pop dances at the desk. Eventually, that passion is churned down into snapping up shoes on a subway, making the creative process feel more like an advert for tenacious labour than anything fundamentally creative or fulfilling. Trust Disney to ruin the creative process and passions of its characters with a terrible montage. Such is the life of Sneakerella, a good message buried under awkwardly obvious messages of following passions and dreams to their fulfilment. Soppy and useless at the best of times, but at least it feels as if there is some heart to it.