From critical hits to massive flops this sponge has done it all

Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? If your answer was a good movie then I’m afraid you’re wrong.

The SpongeBob movie: Sponge on the run is the latest Nickelodeon movie to be produced by United Plankton Pictures and presented by Paramount Animation and Netflix. Sponge on the run focuses on SpongeBob's beloved pet snail Gary who is unfortunately snail-napped, SpongeBob along with Patrick embark on an epic adventure to The Lost City of Atlantic City to bring Gary home.

The movie has its many problems, the lack of good jokes sadly does not outweigh the bad ones which is a shame because this movie does deliver some cracking one-liners. My personal favourite being from Squidward, voiced by Rodger Bumpass, “Another day, another migraine.”

The comedy as it should be is tailored towards kids, from the gross out humour to the fart jokes. However, as an adult watching this the mention of Instagram and Twitter ruined the innocence these characters had in favour for a trendy internet joke.

A prominent selling point of this movie was its star-studded cast, the trailer for this movie featured John Wick actor Keanu Reeves playing Sage, a god-like tumbleweed. Unlike previous versions of SpongeBob movies, the cameos serve more a comedic break from the actual story. Compared to Hasselhoff's scenes in the first SpongeBob movie; Snoop Dogg, Danny Trejo and Reggie Watts serve as comic relief in an already comedic film, therefore making their roles pointless.

The Villain is oddly disappointing, in a world where villains seem to get more attention than the heroes you would have thought they’d pay more care to making him good. However, I wouldn’t class King Poseidon as a villain and his motives aren’t strong enough to hold an hour and 40 minutes, as well as the lack of character development that goes into him. Moreover, the voice actor for the King, Matt Berry, was previously featured in the last SpongeBob movie, Sponge Out of Water, and it’s very noticeable and distracting as he gave the characters the same voice.

The pace of the movie was that of a snail, many scenes dragged on which brought down the fast pacing the movie was aiming for. Many scenes didn’t feel necessary or add anything to the plot, they were just used for a celebrity cameo or poorly written joke.

The movie will go down as another straight to DVD release, the only enjoyable part was the animation, but it wouldn’t be enough to make me watch it in cinemas as a paying customer.