'The Spongebob Movie: Sponge on the Run' Review
PG: Rude humor, some thematic elements, and mild language
Runtime: 1 Hr and 31 Minutes
Production Companies: Paramount Animation, Nickelodeon Movies, United Plankton Pictures, Media Rights Capital, Mikros Image
Distributor: Paramount Pictures, Paramount+
Director: Tim Hill
Writer: Tim Hill
Voice Cast: Tom Kenny, Awkwafina, Clancy Brown, Rodger Bumpass, Bill Fagerbakke, Mr. Lawrence, Jill Talley, Carolyn Lawrence, Matt Berry, Reggie Watts
Release Date: March 5, 2021
VOD & Paramount+
In the first-ever all CGI SpongeBob motion picture event, THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SPONGE ON THE RUN, SpongeBob SquarePants, his best friend Patrick, and the Bikini Bottom gang star in their most epic adventure movie yet! When SpongeBob's beloved pet snail Gary goes missing, a path of clues leads SpongeBob and Patrick to the powerful King Poseidon, who has Gary held captive in the Lost City of Atlantic City. On their mission to save Gary, SpongeBob and his pals team up for a heroic and hilarious journey where they discover nothing is stronger than the power of friendship.
It goes without saying, Canadian-based animation studio Mikros Image poured their heart and soul into this production. This is the same animation studio that did Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie a few years back, which benefited from an art style that translated the 2D-based designs of the source material into a 3D world. It’s the same style that Blue Sky Studios incorporated into The Peanuts Movie. Sponge on the Run adopts that same aesthetic. From the character designs, set designs, and even the cartoonish expressions, the Mikros team did a fantastic job making Spongebob’s world 3D while maintaining the show’s signature style. I admire the bold and experimental decision to have the film move more like a cartoonish stop-motion project than your standard CG-animated movie… you know… like Scoob. The close-up character shots reveal great attention to detail regarding textures. You can see Spongebob’s pores, Sandy’s fur, Poseidon’s scales, etc. The film prospers from its bright, colorful art direction, especially when Spongebob and Patrick hit the film’s major set piece, The Lost City of Atlantic City, which is pretty much just an underwater version of Atlantic City.
I want to make this abundantly clear: The only positive comments I have about this film solely go to the animators who worked tirelessly on it. Visually, it’s a beautiful piece of work that should definitely be commended.
And… that’s the only redeemable quality from this offensive turd of a movie.
The Spongebob Movie: Sponge on the Run is as disrespectful to Stephen Hillenburg as Bohemian Rhapsody was to Freddie Mercury. Despite the top-notch animation, I cannot believe I just watched what was the equivalent of Nickelodeon, Viacom execs, and Tim Hill digging up Stephen Hillenburg’s corpse, kicking it around, and laughing right in his face.
This movie made me reflect on the previous Spongebob movies with a newfound perspective. Each Spongebob movie served as a representation of the different eras within the series’ ongoing lifespan.
2004’s The Spongebob Squarepants Movie represented the end of the Stephen Hillenburg era. It was his passionate, personal sendoff to his baby, which was initially supposed to be the bookend to Spongebob Squarepants. In the eyes of many OG Spongebob fans, it was the definitive end to the series. It encapsulated everything seasons 1 through 4 built towards and wrapped up Hillenburg’s series with a perfect little bow. Then, because of greed and popularity, Nickelodeon demanded more Spongebob but Hillenberg wanted to move on and pursue other opportunities, so he enlisted Paul Tibbitt –– one of the original storyboard directors on the series –– to run the series, which he did from 2005-2015.
This brings us to 2015’s The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, the standalone sequel that represented the end of the Paul Tibbitt era. It was a silly, irreverent romp that boldly stuck to its 2D animation roots, especially when the animation industry was solely making CGI movies. Say what you will about Sponge Out of Water, but it introduced a ton of memorable jokes — ones that poked fun at the apocalyptic setting before Mad Max: Fury Road was even released. Hell, even Hillenburg returned as a story writer for that film. Afterward, he briefly worked on a few episodes and executive-produced the series until his untimely death in 2018. Following the movie, Tibbitt stepped down as showrunner in 2015 and executive-produced the show until 2017… yet, Spongebob never ended.
Now we’re at Sponge on the Run, which represents the Viacom era. Because of Spongebob’s exceedingly high popularity and the huge monetary haul from the previous movie, Viacom commissioned a third movie that feels like it was completely constructed by a committee. Despite some of the past animators and artists from the series returning to work on this movie, the fast and manic motion of the 2D series doesn’t translate well to the stylized stop-motion feel. Spongebob just doesn’t translate to 3D well. I was already wary of writer/director Tim Hill because, on one hand, he co-developed Spongebob and worked on it during its heyday, but on the other hand, he is an absolutely abysmal filmmaker who hasn’t directed a good movie since 1999’s Muppets in Space. I honestly thought this would be his first decent movie, but I was wrong. This is still a Tim Hill movie.
One of the most egregious elements of this movie lies within the screenplay, which fails to capture the identity of the beloved character while throwing him into a plot that has already been treaded in the franchise. The narrative sets Spongebob and his friend Patrick on a quest from Bikini Bottom to the Lost City of Atlantic City to save his pet snail, Gary, trying to save him from becoming King Poseidon’s face cream lotion. It’s an amalgamation of everything in the franchise thus far, from the first movie’s buddy road-trip format to the plot of 2005’s “Have You Seen This Snail?” special, plus a major set-piece that is reminiscent of “Atlantis SquarePantis”, which featured David Bowie. Each film entry’s plot was unapologetically ambitious, but Sponge on the Run feels completely calculated.
Most of the humor falls completely flat and barely resembles anything of Spongebob’s identity. Spongebob used to be the golden standard of comedy and was able to always stand on its own two feet. Because Tim Hill is… well, Tim Hill, much of the film’s humor relies on pop culture references. Not even current references, but outdated ‘90s humor that not even younger audiences will get. What child would appreciate a Kenny G visual gag, a Titanic reference, a sequence where Spongebob and Patrick sing and dance to Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca”, or a random live-action musical set-piece featuring Snoop Dogg and Danny Trejo that serves no purpose and isn’t even remotely funny? This type of humor would’ve worked in 2004, the year the first film was released when all these references were viable. But even then, the approach this film takes towards humor goes directly against Spongebob’s identity. This is the type of humor that belongs in a Shrek movie, which is funny to say considering Shrek 2 had a memorable cover of “Livin’ La Vida Loca” sung by Eddie Murphy’s Donkey and Antonio Banderas’ Puss in Boots.
The only timely cameo that somewhat works is Keanu Reeves as a talking tumbleweed, but even then, his appearance isn’t even a cameo. He’s legit a supporting character. Compared to Antonio Banderas’s lively performance in Sponge Out of Water and the first movie’s iconic David Hasselhoff cameo, Reeves hardly adds anything of weight to this already struggling movie.
It’s bad enough that the film is unfunny, dull, and narratively trite, but to add insult to injury this movie sticks its middle fingers up at Hillenburg’s grave to serve as a backdoor pilot to the series spin-off Kamp Koral: Spongebob’s Under Years. Instead of actually paying homage to the show’s roots, the film features the gang telling a judge during Spongebob’s trial that they all met at a summer camp where they befriended him. At that moment, the sound of corporate gears churning becomes louder as it straight-up redacts Hillenburg’s continuity just so it can be a hollow commercial for a spin-off he never cleared. Everybody remembers the episode “Tea at the Treedome”, which introduced Sandy Cheeks for the first time and brought us this classic joke:
This movie stares directly at your face and says, “You know this moment? This iconic moment? It never happened. It doesn’t exist. Hillenburg is dead and we own his shit, so what we say goes.” It’s so abhorrently insulting that it genuinely infuriated me. The fact that this didn’t come out in America until after Paramount rebranded CBS All Access as Paramount+ so it can coincide with the exclusive Kamp Koral: Spongebob’s Under Years spin-off makes it more infuriating. This is a soulless cash grab commercial that’s on the same level as, if not worse than, the greed of Disney and their live-action remakes.
No matter what angle you approach this from, Sponge on the Run fails to find an audience, which is heartbreaking given that Spongebob has a wide appeal for just about everyone. It’s too generic and comedically outdated for younger audiences and is a major spit in the face for OG Spongebob fans who grew up with him. I barely laughed and found myself cringing through most of it. This movie pissed me off more than Antebellum did and that’s saying a lot.
I will give Sponge on the Run a zero-star rating, not just because of what it is, but also what it represents. Sponge on the Run is a reflection of the greed that overtook Nickelodeon and Viacom that is still sucking all the lifeforce out of a property that should’ve been put to rest eons ago. I don’t believe in the phrase, “This movie ruined my childhood,” because all the old Spongebob episodes I grew up loving are easily accessible. But to see Spongebob become such a soulless, pale imitation of what it once was is truly maddening. This had to be the most unenjoyable, angering movie-watching experience I’ve had in a really long time. Y’all took Stephen Hillenburg’s legacy, retconned it, desecrated it, and spat in the face of the audience that this property appeals to. You fucked with Hillenburg’s continuity and had the audacity to end the film with “In memory of Stephen Hillenberg” after dancing on his grave for 90 minutes straight. Y’all are some evil sons of bitches.
