Thugaboo: Sneaker Madness

When I saw a clip of this special in a TikTok compilation, I was honestly confused more than anything. Now that I've watched the whole thing, I'm more annoyed that clip because it was just a small piece of a painfully dull package. From the awful writing to the unlikable characters, this special makes it's 45 minute runtime feel like an eternity.

Created by the Waynes Brothers, the special focuses on a group of neighborhood munchkins (I refuse to call them kids -.-) making bootleg shoes. I'm guessing the Waynes Brothers wanted to teach kids about how it's wrong to make bootleg versions of the things you want. However, whatever good intentions they had is completely lost on me in the execution. The writing is painfully bad as it does a poor job at pacing and structure. It took over 5 minutes to get to the inciting incident and by the time we get to them actually making the bootlegs, the special is more than halfway over. All the while it pads the runtime with unfunny joke upon unfunny joke that give Family Guy cutaways a run for their money. It feels like the concept wasn't sustainable for an hour so they had to improvise by putting in gags ever minute. If you cut out all the pointless and unfunny gags, this special could easily be around 20 minutes. Not that it would help because the characters are insufferable.

The characters in the special are at best one dimensional and at worst they are just downright despicable. Starting with our leading munchkin, D-Roc is such a selfish and spoiled brat who only cares about showing off and wanting to be a successful rapper. I know we're supposed to emphasize with him, but I fail to understand why I should care about this spoiled rapper wannabe who only wants shoes to impress his peers. This is not a relatable character, this is a pathetic dweeb that would make Blooregard Q. Kazoo facepalm over his selfishness. His sister Dee Dee isn't much better as she's a selfish and greedy tramp who's only in it for the money. Dirty is Pig-Pen if he was black (they just barely dodge a lawsuit thanks to the character design and voice being unique enough), DJ is a white guy pretending to be black (it's not funny, it's stupid), Soo Young makes the bootleg shoes and Money is a talking dog...that's it, that's his character. None of the other characters have anything interesting going for them and only exist to fill up space. You could get the exact same results by replacing them all with pieces of cardboard.

There's a reason why I don't refer to these characters as kids: because they neither sound nor act like actually kids. The voice actors were all given the direction to act like they normally would if this was a sitcom and they were all adults. Not a single actor voicing these munchkins ever once sounded like they were playing kids. George O. Gore II is basically playing Junoir from My Wife & Kids (another Waynes property I hate) when voicing D-Roc and it just sounds so off. Countess Vaughn's sassy independent woman attitude does not fit at all with what's supposed to be a little girl. Michael Rapaport sounded way off as DJ, especially in the infamous TikTok clip where he's saying goodbye to his Dad in a civilized tone. Nancy Lee sounded really awkward as Soo Young, going back and forth between an American voice and a Chinese voice. I never bought Shawn or his brother Marlon Waynes as Slim or Dirty as their voices would fit much better if they were playing adults. None of the other actors made a lasting impression either way as the material they were given wasn't funny or interesting.

Visually, the animation is not too shabby. The character designs all have an appealing and unique appearance to them, particularly in their clothes and hairstyles. The actual character animation though is fine, but nothing spectacular really makes it anything to right home about. Where the animation really falters is in the visual gags were the impacts and cartoon antics feel very weak. Gags like D-Roc's enormous cranium and him getting hit by a shoe don't land because it's not exaggerated or impactful enough. The backgrounds are well detailed though and this neighborhood feels very lived in.

The Boo Crew: Sneaker Madness is yet another example of a rightfully forgotten failure. It's animation is pretty solid on its own, but the writing is still terrible, the characters are unlikable, the voice acting is painfully bad and above all, it's just NOT funny. Thankfully this is just a 45 minute special and not a full length animated series because I don't think my sanity could handled 13, nevermind 26, more episodes of this quality. If you want a cartoon that does a better job at teaching kids what not to do when you want something, watch Ed, Edd, n Eddy. No seriously, each episode basically does what this special tried and failed to do but infinitely better.