My Review of The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run · 9:57pm Mar 19th, 2023
Rating Scale:
12/10—a complete masterpiece; flawless and outstanding
11/10—Excellent, near-perfect film
10/10—the standard rating; awesome film with a couple of flaws
9/10—a wonderful film with several flaws
8/10–a great film with numerous flaws but not enough to ruin it
7/10—a fun and entertaining movie; not great but still enjoyable
6/10—a slightly above average film; it is something I might watch again
5/10—mediocre movie; not awful but not great either
4/10—a below average film; it could have been much better
3/10—a bad film; poorly written and poorly executed
2/10—a very bad movie; the few good things in the movie overshadowed by the bad things
1/10—a terrible movie; a total waste of time
0/10—a worthless piece of abomination; should have never been made
Greetings, everyone. This is Mr. J back with another movie review for today. This afternoon, I will be reviewing the third installment of the SpongeBob SquarePants series entitled: “Sponge on the Run”. This was originally planned to be released in theaters by Paramount Pictures, but that was changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, they released it on Paramount + which is where I watched it for the first time. To be honest…it was absolutely horrible. This is by far the worst SpongeBob movie I have seen out of all three movies, and everything I loved about the first two movies was completely lacking therein. The fact that the series itself is being milked to oblivion is bad enough, but these motherfuckers had the audacity to go even further in destroying the franchise.
In this movie, Gary goes missing again! Oh, no! Shocker! Plankton steals Gary and takes him to King Poseidon in Atlantic City and then make SpongeBob go there to make sure he doesn’t foil his plans again. Now SpongeBob and Patrick must find Gary before it’s too late!
This, right here, is where the movie falls apart. Remember season 4 episode 3 where Gary ran away from home, and SpongeBob had to look for him? Guess what? This is now the second time SpongeBob gets really sad over the thought of losing Gary. Why are they now repeating a similar older plot? Did they not have any original ideas at that point? Also, what made Plankton think that stealing Gary and selling him to Atlantic City would make SpongeBob stop fighting him? Or using a robot to direct him far away from Bikini Bottom would work? This may sound nitpicky, but Plankton should have organized some simpler means to ensure his victory.
Holding Gary hostage himself or threatening him with hot-boiling lava if SpongeBob continues to protect the Krabby Patty Secret Formula would have been a far better option, in my opinion.
Furthermore, the movie felt like a blatant repeat of the first movie such as the following: Plankton steals something and takes it to a faraway city, SpongeBob and Patrick go on a life-and-death mission and retrieve that said macguffin, our protagonists are guided by a heroic figure, SpongeBob gets some redundant character development and relearns the same lessons, and more stupid comedy. You see? These writers had no originality in mind and decided to rehash some older ideas and mix them together so that they look different.
Some of the new characters were even annoying in this while others were just unnecessary. First off, I wasn’t particularly pleased with the Sage character. The only thing he did was put up with SpongeBob and Patrick’s bullshit while trying to dump them with meaningless expositions and challenges. Keanu Reeves didn’t need to be in this mess.
Otto was really unimportant for the plot. Why use that character? That robot felt so annoying and irritating to listen to from start to finish. It may be due to Awkwafina’s awful voice acting, but it could have been a much more interesting character than it was.
It may be just me, but the comedy and the soundtrack were both equally over-the-top and way below average. I’m surprised Hans Zimmer was one of the composers of the music here because one would think he would do a lot better than this. But nope, this was just dull and abysmal to watch. Ugh!
And let me just say that I hate this style of computer animation…mostly when it comes to SpongeBob. It looks so weird, wrong, and off-putting for this franchise; in fact, it looks even worse than the computer animation from the last film! It should just stick to 2D animation and nothing more.
But there is one thing I hate the most about this movie—the Kamp Koral backstory scene. It completely retcons the origins of our main characters in regards to how they all met for the first time. Mr. Krabs and Sandy, for instance, have already met SpongeBob in the first few episodes of the series back when it all started, not in Kamp Koral! It just doesn’t make any sense!! It was nothing more than a cheap way to stage a new series for SpongeBob just to milk it even more even if it makes no sense whatsoever! I get that his friends were trying to compliment him in pointing out all the good things he has done in their lives despite his flaws, but it was executed in the most horrendous way possible.
Plus, Plankton should not have felt guilty after he successfully ruined Mr. Krabs’s business. He should have gloated to his face and taken the formula while he had the chance. Since when did he ever take Mr. Krabs’s feelings into consideration? He should have felt very happy to see him upset, knowing that SpongeBob isn’t around to make Krabby Patties anymore and thus make him more money. If he helped the gang rescue Gary and SpongeBob, then why did he revert back to his old self and take over Bikini Bottom in the first movie? It’s like they made him OOC for no reason other than, “Well, the plot said so!”
Keep in mind that this movie was especially dedicated in honoring Stephen Hillenburg, the creator of SpongeBob who sadly passed away in 2018. *sigh* It makes me sad knowing that they dishonored his legacy by running the series to the ground with garbage like this.
Oh, and I didn’t like the ending. SpongeBob is only capable of caring for one snail as shown in the season 9 episode “Sanctuary!”. He would be overwhelmed and stressed out by a large number of snails in Bikini Bottom.
Overall, this is a disastrous SpongeBob movie. It has zero originality and freshness, has unfunny jokes, a redundant storyline, needless celebrity cameos, annoying characters, an infuriating retcon, and stupid inconsistencies. I’ll give this a 2/10! The voice acting was good, but other than that, it is a waste of time.
Peace.
Ouch
I haven’t seen this movie yet, but from the beginning, I’ve had incredibly low expectations for it because of everything you mentioned here. Some of these things weren’t ones I even knew about until now.
The things I saw from the trailers and clips, though, were the low key computer-animated style and the contradictory backstory, which did not align with the SpongeBob continuity at all.
I’ll still give it a look someday, but I have a feeling I’m gonna give one heck of a rant.
Man this entire movie is just a lazy cash grab because someone wanted a new coffee machine in the office..
My in-universe explanation about Plankton’s OOC moment is he still had some humanity in himself; sadly, the repeated failed attempts to outbest Krabs slowly chipped that away until he became what he was in the series finale.