Movie Nation

A rom-com that Gravitas picked up for May 9 (streaming) release. Doesn’t look like much, but you never know. “Greek” in the title is a foolproof hook.

TBH, there was no LOL at the news this had come to pass. I kind of cringed, truth be told. “A series?” As if that 1981 feature film wasn’t interminable enough.

Yes, that early 2000s generation of TV funnyfolk are aging into their AARP years. Colman Domingo represents the wild card in this series about the “seasons” of life and love and marriages.

Kerri Kenney also stars in this May 1 Netflix release.

Marlon Wayans and “Atlanta” alumnus Tyriq Withers star in this horror allegory about “What are you willing to sacrifice” for the fleeting fame of an NFL career?

Aside from CTE, wrecked joints, shortened life span, etc?

Great timing, with the NFL/college football seasons freshly launched, a little pushback for the Sport that Ate America’s Soul.

Slapping Jordan Peele’s name on this as a producer is a plus, suggesting this could more than skin deep.

“HIM” hits theaters Sept. 19.

The last thing you want to sense in an animated movie for children is cynicism, filmmakers and financiers who make no effort to hide their desire to turn over an easy buck by selling something to kids.

The “Space Jam” movies reeked of that, product placement (the NBA, Looney Tunes characters) masquerading as “movies.”

There’s plenty of cynicism in the trippy bore “Sneaks,” a film that tries to tap into “sneaker culture” and the hoop dreams attached to footwear, especially among inner city African American youth.

It’s not the Converse, Nike and Adidas jokes and plugs alone that make this Briarcliff Entertainment enterprise dubious. But there’s so little entertainment value that throwing a long list of famous, semi-farmous and used-to-be-famous voices at it looks and sounds like desperation. Which it is.

A couple of animation filmmakers with Disney credentials — writer and co-director Rob Edwards scripted the delightful “Princess and the Frog” — and a production that hired a “Sneaker Culture Consultant” turned out a modestly animated quest about two designer sneakers separated from each other and their rightful owner, a baller with “dreams,” in the big city.

Anthony Mackie voices Ty, half of the pair of Alchemy 24s (with sister Maxine (Chloe Bailey) that teen baller Edson (Swae Lee) hopes will help him make his mark on the basketball court. A hulking villain, The Collector (Laurence Fishburne) with a thing for designer athletic footwear steals the pricey shoe Edson could only acquire by winning a contest.

Maxine is to be put on display in a high-rise flat packed with rare shoes and a sea of Converse boxes. Ty, stumbling around until he hooks up with J.B. (Martin Lawrence), the sort of streetwise shoe that hangs from electrical wires in cities and towns all over America, can guide him through uptown towards his goal.

A Greek chorus of hanging sneakers comments on the quest as Ty and J.B. venture through a shoe underworld of dumpsters and nightclubs, where they mix with stilettos and swells from other strata of society. They even encounter a Brit-accented Broadway type in sneaker form.

“Perhaps you saw me in ‘The Taking of the Shoe.’ ‘Twelfth Nike?’ Much Adidas about Nothing?”

Rats must be fought off, skateboards and buses ridden and clues collected to track down Maxine.

Meanwhile, Maxine and other “collected” shoes await their fate as The Collector fights with The Forger (Roddy Ricch) for legitimacy in a world of stolen, half-shredded, worn-out and even counterfeit footwear.

“Sneaker culture consultant.” Right.

There’s barely a chuckle in any of it. The shoes “look” right, but no effort was made to make the eyes even “Cars” expressive, and that’s a low bar.

I kept thinking of the indie animated stinker “Tugger: The Jeep 4×4 Who Wanted to Fly,” another product placement in search of an animated story that would sell it to kids. I strained to make out the voice actors, who include Macy Gracy and Keith David.

And I kept a close eye on my watch. Because time stops when you’re grinding through a cynical bore like “Sneaks.”

Rating: PG

Cast: The voices of Anthony Mackie, Laurence Fishburne, Macy Gray, Swae Lee, Ella Mai, Amira McCoy, Roddy Ricch, Keith David and Martin Lawrence

Credits: Directed by Rob Edwards and Christopher Jenkins, scripted by Rob Edwards. A Briarcliff Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:32

A kiddie comedy about that special pair of sneakers who carry a young baller’s dream, separated by “The Collector,” with one Sneaker seeking his mate…

You’d expect to hear the voice of Martin Lawrence in it, but Anthony Mackie and Lawrence Fishburne?

I may not review it because it isn’t all that. (OK, I did review it.)

But with a “Sneaker Culture” consultant/tour guide listed in the credits, it’s the nuttiest idea to turn into a kiddie cartoon. Or one of the nuttiest.

Had the mood of of the audience and indeed the country changed since “Wicked One” opened last fall?

Whatever cheery optimism the overproduced blockbuster engendered is going to find a steeper hill to climb when this “Wicked” this way comes Nov. 21.

Foster plays a man obsessed with saving drivers from themselves as they try to take the intersection where he lives at dangerous speeds.

Smulders is the wife trapped in this obsession.

This thriller drops April 23.