Sponge On The Run (2020) - A Fun way to kill time!

A staple of many childhoods is the cartoon, Spongebob Squarepants. And with a second lockdown underway in the UK, it seemed the right time to check out the character’s latest cinematic outing, Sponge On The Run. After skipping it’s planned cinema release, the film recently dropped on Netflix, and is grabbing the interest of many viewers. But is it warranted?...

Straying from the traditional 2D design seen in the show and previous films, this film utilised 3D animation, which is a breath of fresh air, and very well done by the production team. While it definitely takes getting use to if you’re use to the traditional designs, the upgrade feels justified when being utilised on a project originally intended for the cinema screens. Despite being rather simple and lacking in depth, the story mostly keeps you invested, and even knows how to pull on the heart strings at specific moments. It does grinde to a halt a third of the way through surrounding a sequence in the “real world”, which wouldn’t be too much of a problem, if the characters didn’t hammer home the fact that this sequence was a dream. It makes the sequence feel extremely pointless. The inclusion of Snoop Dog also felt tacked on and unnecessary. Thankfully, the rest of the film flows really well.

With announcements being made around a spin off surrounding these characters at a younger age, the last third of the film feels like it’s trying to sell this planned spin off to it’s audience. This feels rather lazy, and smells of desperation. It’s a great shame thou, as the background to this moment can be quite heartwarming, seeing how Spongebob (Tom Kenny) has affected each character from the start. The only other complaint would be how the plan set out by antagonist, Plankton (Mr Lawrence) seems to vanish without a trace halfway through the film. He just joins the rest of the characters for the final act, without a transition in character, and no conclusion to the fact that he ended up with the formula he had been after throughout the film’s beginning and the entire series prior to this.

I will give this film credit thou, for all it's narrative flaws, it is a lot of fun to watch. The jokes hit most of the time, helped along by some brilliantly written lines. The performances by the cast and the lively animation also helps distract from the awkward and drab moments. And while it can be seen as annoying, the moments surrounding Spongebob and Patrick (Bill Fagerbakke) delving into road buddy cliques was kinda funny to see. It's clear that it's not meant to be taken serious, which is a nice change from the serious tone some of these cliques have in other examples of this storyline. Are these moments hugely important? No, but it nevertheless kept me smiling and chuckling, which in a film about a talking sponge, is a pretty decent result.

So while looking stunning, this film is nowhere near amazing. If you want something fun to kill an hour and a half during lockdown, you can’t do wrong. But if you want a really strong Spongebob film, I would personally recommend the first film from 2004, which was better structured, and had a lot more finality to it. Sponge On The Run is nowhere near a bad film, but ultimately an average one at best.

SCORES

Story - 2/5

Characters - 4/5

Production - 4/5

Acting - 3.5/5

Music - 2.5/5

Total - 6.4/10