Giving these undersea creatures a realistic texture, as opposite to hand-drawn anthropomorphized details, plunges the film into uncanny territory. But here, the reliance on CG does the characters and their world a disservice. The show’s old episodes only ever used live action for the surface world, and it wasn’t until the 2015 film Sponge Out of Water that the characters were animated with CG (and only when they ventured onto land). Photo: Jonny Cournoyer / Paramount Animation On the other hand, this narrative approach, coupled with the decision to use only live action and CGI instead of the show’s usual 2D animation, makes the film feel like a hallucination, rather than a tale of a cheerful, naïve young character forced out into a world that doesn’t share his optimism. On one hand, this “throw everything at the wall without rhyme or reason” edict shouldn’t matter much, in a story of a talking bath sponge driving to an underwater casino town to retrieve his pet mollusk. (“Sage out!” he exclaims, rolling out of frame after delivering spiritual advice.) There’s also a live-action cowboy-pirate-zombie musical number starring Danny Trejo and Snoop Dogg, which sounds like a random non sequitur, because it absolutely is one.Ī whole lot of this film seems to take place in a live-action dream about the Old West, for no other reason than to shove SpongeBob and Patrick into weird scenarios en route to their destination. For instance, Keanu Reeves joins the cast as a wise old sage named Sage, who also happens to be made out of sage sticks - essentially, Reeves’ live-action head composited within a glowing tumbleweed. However, the zany concepts and celebrity cameos it centers instead are bizarre enough (and metatextual enough) to be enjoyable in their own right.
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But even though the movie recycles the setup of a wildly popular SpongeBob TV episode (2005’s “Have You Seen This Snail?”, which had a massive audience of almost 8 million), the film sidelines the heart and sincerity that defined not only those early seasons of the show, but the infinitely rewatchable 2004 film The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, and the blast of creative optimism that was the recent Broadway musical. Again, the scope of a film gives him a chance at an adventure more challenging and grandiose than those seen on TV - think of the relationship between classic Star Trek films and shows. Like the two films before it, Sponge On the Run sends SpongeBob on a mission outside his comfort zone and far from his hometown of Bikini Bottom. Plankton’s plan involves getting SpongeBob out of the way by kidnapping Gary and having him sent to The Lost City of Atlantic City (no explanation required), and as always, SpongeBob is joined on his road quest by his trusty-but-doltish best friend, Patrick Star. But the plot largely comes down to yet another evil scheme by the diminutive, one-eyed Plankton, Krabs’ business rival, who hopes to steal the secret formula to the coveted Krabby Patty, the undersea burger SpongeBob prepares with care and glee. Krabs and his friend Sandy Cheeks - an industrious, karate-loving squirrel in a space suit. The usual supporting characters get involved at various points, from SpongeBob’s curmudgeonly octopus neighbor Squidward to his avaricious crustacean boss Mr. In its opening scenes, SpongeBob’s third cinematic outing (and his first that’s entirely CG-animated) seems to promise a story about the young, sprightly fry cook’s relationship with his pet snail Gary, a distinctly feline creature who speaks in disarming “meows.” The film lingers, for a moment, on the fact that Gary feels abandoned and lonely once his owner heads to work, but it’s an idea the story doesn’t really return to, even after Gary goes missing, and SpongeBob must find a way to track him down and bring him home. For a property that has seen some genuinely moving and hilarious highs, though, it probably should have been more.
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The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge On the Run is the third film in the series - which has spanned 13 TV seasons since 1999, and is even getting a new spin-off on Paramount Plus - and it’s an entertaining entry, though an unremarkable one. Like any good kids’ cartoon, it relies on bright colors and broad character traits, but this franchise in particular also has enough pop-culture references and cheeky stealth jokes to keep adults from getting bored. One of the charms of SpongeBob SquarePants is that past a certain point, you know exactly what you’re getting.