Its director, Tim Hill, does not seem at all worried that audiences won’t know the difference.Īll that matters here is joy.

(His name is Sage.) Sometimes Sponge on the Run is all-animated sometimes the animation is mixed in with live action. This is ludicrous entertainment for frazzled times.Īnd there you have it-though I realize I’ve neglected to mention that Danny Trejo and Keanu Reeves also breeze through, the former as a zombie cowboy and the latter as a literal talking head who offers wisdom and guidance from the hollow center of a tumbleweed. The movie is an act of loony generosity we shouldn’t refuse. The point of SpongeBob SquarePants in general-and the specific aim of The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run, the third entry in the feature-film annex of the long-running television show-is to splash around in ridiculousness for its own sake. In the undersea village of Bikini Bottom and its environs, we’re invited to accept the logic of a pet snail who meows, or to appreciate the way a grouchy restaurant owner, who happens to be a literal crab, chants “Money! Money! Money!” because there is nothing on Earth, or even under the sea, he loves more. The SpongeBob SquarePants franchise offers no such promise of elitist sophistication. It could never be enough just to laugh at a talking donkey. The suggestion was that adults needed permission to enjoy the films they felt duty-bound to bring their kids to.

Around the time of the first Shrek movie-roughly the early 2000s-it became de rigueur for animated films to include assertive, winking jokes targeted at adults, gags or pop-culture references that would sail right over the kiddies’ heads while eliciting knowing chuckles from the grownups.

The sponge bob move