YMMV / The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: While Atlantic City is based on Las Vegas, there is an actual Atlantic City in New Jersey—which, like Vegas, is also a resort city with casinos and gambling.
• Awesome Art: While not everyone likes the change from hand-drawn animation to CGI, even those people agree that the 3D look replicates the art-style of the show really well. It helps that it's done by Mikros Image, the same animation studio that did Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The showdown in the old west town against zombie cowboy pirates (also implied to be vampires). It goes on for way too long, (even featuring a cameo/rap number from Snoop Dogg) and while it introduces Sage, the actual challenge is never brought up again and is All Just a Dream.
• Contested Sequel: While the first movie is very popular among SpongeBob fans and Sponge Out of Water is generally considered good or above-average, Sponge on the Run has received rather mixed reception. The art style has been praised, but the movie overall has a Denser and Wackier tone and humor that feels very out of place with the series. It also uses no APM music or Hawaiian-style tracks heard in the show and previous movies. And then there's the inclusion of Camp Coral and how it retcons how SpongeBob met everyone. However, the movie still has its fans, particularly for the cute Camp Coral scenes and the musical number near the end. Once the film hit the US, critics appeared to be warmer towards it as well.
• Demographically Inappropriate Humour: The entire "Livin' la Vida Loca" scene has SpongeBob and Patrick gambling on-screen, capped off with SpongeBob saying that he lost all his money.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Otto has been beloved by many viewers for having several funny one-liners. Being played by Awkwafina probably also helps.
  • Sage, due to actually helping SpongeBob and Patrick on their quest to find Gary, and being played by Keanu Reeves. He's also pretty funny.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • While most fans don't mind seeing how SpongeBob and Gary met, the mere mention of Kamp Koral was enough to get their blood boiling, since that project was widely despised before it even aired due to ignoring the wishes of the late Stephen Hillenburg, who didn’t want any spin-offs at all (even though he actually said he didn't see any spinoffs).^note  It's worth noting that Hillenburg was not involved in the current incarnation of the movie. The unfinished SpongeBob sequel directed by Paul Tibbitt (with alien cat villains as the main plot) was the one with Hillenburg's involvement; it began development in 2015 and was shelved after it failed to be green-lit by Paramount. There was no change in directors or massive overhaul of the story; rather, the first project was canned, and a second one (Sponge on the Run) started with no relation to the first.
  • While the show doesn't really have any strict continuity, many fans do not like the retcon of how SpongeBob and Sandy met with the movie making it so that they met at camp as kids, completely ignoring her debut in the second half of the very first episode (as well as the fact that she's from Texas). Not only that but they also retconned how SpongeBob met Patrick, Mr. Krabs and Squidward, completely ignoring the fact that SpongeBob knew Patrick since they were babies, met Squidward when he moved into the neighborhood as shown in "Truth or Square" and that he met Mr. Krabs in the first episode of the show which was him applying to the Krusty Krab. Even Mrs. Puff falls into this because the movie shows SpongeBob meeting her at camp as as a kid even though "Doing Time" showed him meeting her when she opened her boating school. All of this made many old time fans distance themselves from this movie even more.
  • The Reveal that the Krabby Patty secret formula is effectively not one and how they're made (by SpongeBob) is what makes them special, which goes against the entire series's lore about them including much of the first movie. Though to be fair, some episodes have alluded to the patties only being as good as the cook's ability to make them, with Squidward's and King Neptune's (in "Neptune's Spatula") being particularly horrible.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: The initial "cat invasion" draft has surprisingly a lot of fans, with many enjoying the high stakes and intricate designs. While it's generally agreed to be too out-there, even for a series as absurd as this one, many would love seeing the idea revitalized in some form, maybe in the form of a TV special or as a completely new IP entirely.
• Harsher in Hindsight: When introducing the Window of Meanwhile, Sage describes it as "like a video-on-demand service of parallel action" and later when asked to view it again replies "No, it's not an on-demand service!" These jokes sting a little bit now that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused the movie to skip its theatrical release in most countries and instead premiere on video on demand services in the United States.
• He Really Can Act: Rodger Bumpass really shines as Squidward when he's defending SpongeBob at the end of the film. The way he says his final line in particular is very powerful and moving.
• Ho Yay:
  • As Patrick falls flat on his face, SpongeBob voluntarily taps his butt to get him back up.
  • Plankton is forced to push as Patrick struggles to fly through a tight window; Plankton is squished in between Patrick's, you guessed it, buttocks.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • There are plenty of people who noticed that the plot is eerily similar to the episode "Have You Seen This Snail?", except that it involves Gary being "snailnapped" instead of running away.
  • The plot has also been noted to be structurally similar to the first film with SpongeBob and Patrick going on a long road trip to a mysterious city in hopes of retrieving something lost. To top it off, the Patty Wagon even returns (although SpongeBob isn't the one driving it this time).
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Those who otherwise don't care for the movie were soon won over by the appearance of Keanu Reeves.
  • Same can be said for Snoop Dogg after he was revealed in the "Big Game" TV spot.
  • The grand finale where everyone expresses their admiration of SpongeBob and King Poseidon finding redemption is arguably worth the price of admission itself.
• Memetic Mutation: See this film's section on the show's meme page
• Moe: Ten-year-old SpongeBob meeting Gary is pretty cute to watch. It helps that he’s voiced by an actual kid instead of Tom Kenny.
• Padding: The old west scene drags on for way too long, and has next to no impact on the plot.
• Tainted by the Preview: The announcement that the movie would be a tie-in for Kamp Koral did it no favors. Even ignoring the controversies regarding the conception of Kamp Koral, the announcement that this movie would partially serve as a commercial for a spin-off that hardly looked promising or worthwhile and had basically nothing to do with the movie itself narrative-wise rubbed many fans the wrong way. Sure enough, the scenes set at Kamp Koral turned out to be little more than a shameless plug for the spin-off.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: As stated above, some people were not happy with the Art Shift from 2D to 3D, especially animation fans, as the SpongeBob movies were the only consistent source for American theatrical hand-drawn animation.
  • In Greece, the fact that the trailer has SpongeBob voiced by a different actor than his classic ones (Spiros Zoupanos and Lorenzos Fragkoulis) became a sore point for fans of the show.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • One common criticism about the movie is that SpongeBob’s mission to save Gary is barely utilized. SpongeBob hardly ever shares any happy memories with his pet, he gets distracted, doesn’t worry about him much and we don’t get to see Gary’s perspective on the situation.
  • Mr. Krabs replacing SpongeBob with Sandy's robot to save money could’ve been an interesting subplot, but it ends very quickly.
  • After years and years of trying, Plankton finally succeeds in acquiring the Krabby Patty formula roughly halfway through the movie. The consequences of this are never shown and it is never brought up again.
  • SpongeBob's friends missing SpongeBob could've worked if none of them really considered him important or didn't care for him until he was gone. That way, the whole emotional climax during the trial would've been more effective.
  • SpongeBob's friends defending him at his trial would likely have been a lot more impactful had they cited instances in the show itself where SpongeBob helped each of them out, instead of a cheap retcon where each of them met SpongeBob in their youth, all of which just happened to take place at Kamp Koral.
  • The movie sets up SpongeBob's arc to be proving to have courage. That would work, if the movie didn't spend so much time padding itself out with unneeded sequences that don't move the plot along.
• Toy Ship: For the Spandy shippers, young SpongeBob and Sandy are shown to have shared some mildly affectionate moments in the flashback as they lightly slap each other before finishing it off with SpongeBob blowing a raspberry.