Saving Bikini Bottom

Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie is proof that some characters are supporting for good reason. It's a zany, colourful, sugar rush of a film that's clearly made for an extremely young audience that constantly moves between being occasionally funny and constantly awful in a way that has its own rewards. Even at just under 90 minutes it's pushing its luck.

All the returning cast members have played these characters for so long that they're naturals at this. Any intentional laughs come from how loveable these characters are and Tom Kenny in particular remains endlessly endearing as SpongeBob. However, the performance that's the most memorable is easily Wanda Sykes, who is just awful from her first moments and manages to overact whilst phoning it in.

Liza Johnson's direction is bad, especially when compared to previous entries. It's very easy to see why this one has been sent to streaming since it looks noticeably cheaper than all of its predecessors with live action and animation blended in such a terrible way, some of which has to be intentional but that doesn't excuse it. The only part that looks competent is the opening set in Bikini Bottom.

...it really took a turn for the worse. The first half of the movie wasn't that bad. This movie was initially like putting on a comfortable pair of pajamas, comfortable and familiar. But at the specific point where my family all turned to each other and said, "That's just like Shark Boy and Lava Girl" (if you've seen this movie, you'll know exactly the moment), that was the point of no return. It was all downhill after that.

All of the familiar characters were well performed. As for the human element...geez. One of the characters at one point asks, "Wait...we get a paycheck?". Yes, and that's clearly all this was for.

The lackluster performances and abysmal CGI drag the movie down to the point of not being enjoyable. 4/10 is maybe generous, but that's where I'll land.

So i just saw the Sandy Checks movie and it's hands down the worst ever SpongeBob project, The storyline was really rushed, the humor was embarrassingly bad, and the animation was far beyond terrible, not to mention the CGI being worse then Green Lantern. I really don't like the new characters and i think the actors could have done a much better job, and the writing for this movie is so bad that it's undesirable. This movie should have been about SpongeBob and not Sandy. I hope they learn from their mistakes for the next movie and fingers crossed that they make the animation OG SpongeBob style.

The CGI is really bad and unsettling at some moments like Kamp Koral but the writing is also lazy with some weird foot fetish moments despite people who work on the show being involved on this. The villain is also boring and it's just a generic diverse female Ernst Stavro Blofeld type villain who's mostly a ripoff of Burger Beard from Sponge Out of Water but without any of the charm that character had. The musical stuff were unnecessary and the CGI animation didn't help unlike the musical scenes from the previous films like i'm a goofy goober which were catchy and the new characters like the robot horse and Sandy's family are extremely forgettable. Better wait for The Search for Squarepants instead of watching a low budget TV film ripoff.

I don't know if it's that I'm growing out of the franchise or what, but this was really bad. Don't get me wrong. I loved watching SpongeBob growing up and it had a special place in my heart. I'm hoping it's just a a Netflix issue, but again, this sucked. If you're going in here expecting the classic SpongeBob shenanigans you're going to get that. It's the human stuff that sucked. It was cheap, low quality, poorly written, and even cringe inducing. For a SpongeBob movie, you need to focus on your main characters. I did however like the Cheeks family. The writing just wasn't good. I just don't think SpongeBob and humans mix well. It just seems like the SpongeBob franchise is one that is hard to translate from short TV episodes to full length movies.