The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run (2020) Review

 "I'm made out of sage and I am the Sage, so it works out pretty well."
-Sage



After Gary is kidnapped by King Poseidon (Matt Barry), SpongeBob (Tom Kenny) and Patrick (Bill Fagerbakke) embark on an epic journey to rescue the snail.  However, without SpongeBob, Bikini Bottom starts to collapse.


What Works:

The best part of this movie is easily the Old West sequence.  It's bizarre and surreal.  It reminded me a lot of the strangeness of the second movie, which got my hopes up for things to come, but I'll get to that.  The Old West sequence is bonkers and a lot of fun with some excellent celebrity cameos.

Keanu Reeves is actually in a surprising amount of the movie.  From the trailer, I expected him to only be in one or two scenes, but he's actually a supporting character in the story.  Reeves is awesome as Sage and has some of the funniest moments in the movie.

I don't mind the new animation style at all.  It gives the filmmakers the opportunity to create visuals they otherwise wouldn't have been able to.  It's different, but not bad.

Finally, there some genuinely funny moments throughout the film.  I laughed a fair bit, especially at the random Exorcist reference.


What Sucks:

Do you know how you make the pacing of you movie come to a grinding halt?  Spend ten minutes of the 3rd act dedicated to flashbacks that plug the upcoming spin-off.  That's what Sponge on the Run does.  It's actually insane and I couldn't believe what I was watching.  Not only is it a shameless plug, it's not even funny or interesting.  Four of the main characters give a prolonged speech and flashback about how they met SpongeBob at summer camp and changed their lives.  It's sappy and incredibly long, plus it just feels cheap.  I can't think of a movie that derails harder in the 3rd act than this and I will never watch the spinoff show simply because of how insulted I was by this move.

And another thing!  Early on in the TV show, there is a whole episode that introduces SpongeBob to Sandy (Carolyn Lawrence) for the first time.  They retcon this here by having them meet in a flashback when they were kids.  That doesn't even begin to make sense and it spits on early SpongeBob.  Yeah...that's a good idea.

The first 3rd of this movie isn't very interesting.  It's all stuff we've seen before.  Another day in Bikini Bottom, Plankton (Mr. Lawrence) tries to steal the secret formula, comes up with an evil plan and then SpongeBob and Patrick have to go on a quest.  That's how the first movie started nearly beat for beat.  It just takes a while for the movie to do anything interesting.  Also, SpongeBob's character arc is learning how to be brave.  We did this exact same thing in the first movie!

Finally, King Poseidon is a very dull antagonist and isn't interesting in the slightest.  The first movie had multiple villains, who were fun in their own ways and the second movie had Antonio Banderas as Burger Beard, who was awesome.  Poseidon doesn't hold a candle to any of the previous villains.


Verdict:

Sponge on the Run has some funny moments, solid animation, one amazing sequence, and a great performance by Keanu Reeves, but the rest of the movie is a disgrace to the franchise.  It has one of the worst 3rd acts I have ever seen in a film, shameless plugging, a lot of retreading, and a boring antagonist.  What a disappointing mess.

 4/10: Bad 

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