Thread by @ArtofSpongebob

Let's make like burlesque performers and give The Sandy Movie a severe dressing down:

What about the Sandy Movie is so bad?

(Yes, this is a real screencap from the movie)

Let's start with the most fundamental part of any movie: the story.

A movie about SpongeBob and Sandy teaming up in order to save Bikini Bottom from being harvested by a corporation is, admittedly, a fascinating one.

Unfortunately, this is not truly what the movie is about.

This movie follows SpongeBob and Sandy on the journey to a science lab for what feels like an eternity, and more so revolves around the "wacky hijinks" they get up to on the way there than any overarching conflict. It feels incredibly disjointed.

I think this movie's biggest flaw, in terms of story, is that it doesn't commit thoroughly to its premise, and the stakes are immediately set very high at the beginning and are not followed up on at all.

The beginning of this movie sees Bikini Bottom forcefully uprooted, the town shrouded in an ominous green, as Sandy and SpongeBob can do nothing but watch in horror as everything they love is ripped from the Earth.

This scene is followed by the lighting immediately going back to normal, and any momentum screeches to a halt so we can have exposition dumped on us.

Also, SpongeBob goes back to being loud and hyperactive almost immediately after this incident.

After successfully making it to Texas (600 miles from their destination) we cut to the Bikini Bottomites dealing with the fallout of the town being abducted.

The plodding score paired with the constant slapstick in this sequence fail to convey a sense of any real danger or fear.

This movie NEVER, and I mean never stops attempting to tell jokes, regardless of how fitting it is to the tone of the scene. I'll talk about this more later, but it drags this scene down a ton.

Good line read by Clancy at the end, though. "Here be giants."

As you can see in the clip above, this movie has new human characters: Phoebe and Kyle, who are lab assistants, and Sue Nahmee, the "evil mastermind" of the Sea Pals operation.

They plan to turn the inhabitants of Bikini Bottom into a marketable toy line.

Every scene with them is a slow, boring, and unfunny slog that takes place in this one room in a laboratory building.

Sue Nahmee falls flat as a character because her motives are completely ridiculous. This is a consequence of the film never taking itself seriously.

Why does she want to turn Bikini Bottom into toys? Because as a little girl, she was unable to cuddle fish without them dying.

To get back to what is supposed to be the focus of the movie for a second, SpongeBob and Sandy continue meandering through the desert while exchanging unfunny quips (and SpongeBob takes a hearty whiff of a pile of cow manure)...

...until they finally come across a band of desert snake outlaws. They threaten the two, and they fight (after Sandy spontaneously materializes her outfit from "Karate Island.")

While a cool concept, ultimately this band of snakes serves no purpose but to get some quick slapstick gags, and to introduce the rest of the Cheeks family, who rescue SpongeBob and Sandy from the snakes.

If you've read my "Family Matters" thread, you'll know I have beef with the show's increasingly wacky and ungrounded family members being introduced. These characters definitely fit the bill, they feel very stock and very uninspired. Extreme sports grandma? Twins?? How original!

None of these clichés are helped by the fact that, for some reason, they are a family of circus performers. Which of course, has nothing to do with Texas or anything even related to any aspect of Sandy's character.

Once the movie slows down for a little bit (intentionally so, rather than just being a boring drag) Randy reveals himself to be the only compelling character the movie introduces. There's a scene with admittedly nice atmosphere of he and SpongeBob talking and fixing up their car.

After Sandy wakes up, her mom tells her that she hopes Sandy will stay with them, and perform in the circus as she always hoped she would.

What purpose does this subplot serve, you ask? It kills time.

Perhaps nothing shows the awkward, slight disconnect from this movie and the actual series better than the music editor for this film using "Stack of Leis," a track that is used for sad moments in the series, for a family dinner.

Another scene of SpongeBob and Randy bonding is interrupted by a police siren. Randy says they can't pull over because he has "stolen nuts" in the car, so a high speed chase ensues, ending with their car in a desert tornado.

Not to compare apples to oranges, but think back to the first movie. Every trial the duo faces directly relates to their goal (both in getting the crown and how they are punished for not being masculine enough.)

Comparatively, the obstacles SpongeBob and Sandy face in this flick have nothing to do with "Saving Bikini Bottom" beyond that it impedes their physical progress to the laboratory. Snake outlaws, tornados, car chases...there's nothing tying these things together.

After being shot out of a cannon in order to escape the police (shocker: Sandy decides not to stay and perform in the circus) SpongeBob and Sandy wind up at the water park that surrounds the laboratory.

This is a good a time as any to discuss this movie's attempts at comedy.

Every character in this movie will not stop talking. They never stop talking.

Every character constantly spouts unfunny quips as if they were video game characters trying to fill space during gameplay.

The most egregious example of this:

An "action" sequence filled with nonstop puns and quips, capped with the awkward and poorly delivered "Now I know what toothpaste feels like."

This kind of writing is all over the movie, including a line so bad that it was widely criticized by hundreds of people before the movie even was officially released:

This is a problem that bleeds into SpongeBob's character in itself...SpongeBob is not a character designed to constantly say quips. Really, none of the characters are. But the characters saying puns and quips, or doing outlandish physical comedy, is the bulk of this movie.

Because of this, SpongeBob feels significantly dumbed down and even more hyperactive than usual for not much reason. Check out this scene, in which a normal interaction is filled with random visual gags because it would be such a boring scene otherwise.

To blend our two talking points of comedy and story back together, let's take a look at this film's climax, once Sandy and SpongeBob successfully infiltrate the laboratory.

Sue reveals she wants to clone SpongeBob to make toys out of him, and with minimal effort, she puts him in a roller coaster, which for some reason is the path to the cloning machine.

Even when he is facing certain doom, about to be turned into clones to be sold as pets, SpongeBob will not stop with the unfunny quips. And for some reason is happy to ride the coaster, despite knowing exactly what awaits him.

Can't scare the kids too much, I guess.

Please shut up SpongeBob, you are about to die

While SpongeBob is riding the comically slow coaster to death, it's revealed that Sue Nahmee was able to locate Bikini Bottom because Sandy was monitored by her. This causes Sandy to give up, for some reason.

Oh and also Sue Nahmee is a cyborg, why not.

This is incredibly out of nowhere, but also what does it add to the story this late in the movie? How does it further develop the themes of this movie?

You already know the answer, it doesn't.

Is SpongeBob scared of being cloned or not? I have no idea, and seemingly neither did the people who wrote this movie. He continues to giggle while everyone else freaks out until the very end, in which he's suddenly scared.

Genuinely what is the reason for this?

The interruption of this sequence to drop exposition on Sandy and Sue already lowers the stakes and anxiety this coaster was seemingly there to produce, but also SpongeBob not caring if he is about to die doesn't help either.

After an eternity, SpongeBob finally falls into the cloning device.

Even now, SpongeBob continues to spew dumb quips during what should be the dramatic height of the movie.

SpongeBob's reaction to seeing himself be ripped apart: "That's weird!"

"Gee, SpongeBob, now I know what bacon feels like."

The first movie knew when to take itself seriously, and any comedy in this scene comes from natural interaction and conversation between the two.

"Now I know what it's like to be the sidewalk"

Okay I'm done I promise

Squidward's reaction to seeing SpongeBob ripped apart and killed in front of him is some weird scream, sloppily reused from some point in the actual series.

Mr. Krabs repeatedly saying "It's the only thing I ever ask of you" is the only thing that got a laugh out of me in this movie, however this also serves to show how the movie completely fumbles something as big as THE DEATH OF SPONGEBOB by immediately lowering the stakes again.

Much like how the Bikini Bottom abduction is immediately followed by boring exposition, SPONGEBOB'S DEATH is followed by downplaying it immediately, and we're subjected to more slow boring slapstick with the two lab assistants.

The tension and danger in this movie doesn't play out like an actual movie, nothing ever builds. SpongeBob's dead, but they never show the consequences of that. There's just a bunch of him smaller, as if it didn't even really matter at all.

As if to further drive the lack of consequences home, one of the clones talks to Sandy as if it was the real SpongeBob, and awkwardly and directly explains the moral of the movie to Sandy.

There is a funny gag here though with the little cymbal player SpongeBob.

Try as it might, the overarching theme of family doesn't make much sense at all. Several episodes of the actual series deal with Sandy being ostracized because she's a mammal.

Does this moral seem familiar? It should. The show did it much better, much funnier, and much QUICKER in "Texas," in a way that actually made sense given Sandy's relationship with Bikini Bottom.

Suddenly, spurred by tiny SpongeBob's speech that they could hear for some reason, the two boring lab assistants decide to turn against Sue Nahmee.

The danger and threat of Sue was already pretty low, but now it is made even lower, as it's essentially everyone against her now.

This movie's constant fear of higher stakes or genuine danger makes it feel very slow and boring, even in what should be the film's main climax.

Because Sandy is in no real danger, paired with the way she fights her being so silly, this "final battle" just ends up being boring and not very satisfying to watch.

Goofy Goober Rock is no doubt a silly deus ex machina, but it also is a visual and musical spectacle, and feels earned after all that SpongeBob has been through.

Above all, it was just fun to watch.

The opposite of fun to watch, is this moment when Sue Nahmee's head ends up in a fish monster's mouth, in which she is ecstatic to finally "be a fish."

Sandy's unfunny quippy reaction to seeing a woman's head swallowed by a fish: "I didn't see that coming!"

Then, the Bottomites discover that they can reform SpongeBob by squishing the clones together, causing Squidward to say: "Why should this world be different from any other?"

Is this something Squidward has to do often? And they didn't go to a different world? What?

In another example of the movie undermining it's own sense of danger, the dome containing Bikini Bottom is cracked, and the movie can't decide whether it wants to be dramatic again or keep telling lame jokes.

"We're all going to suffocate!!" and then cut to SpongeBob laughing

In order to save Bikini Bottom, for some reason, Sandy and SB decide to call her family for help.

They try to make a big deal out of SpongeBob doing the family whistle Randy Cheeks taught him earlier, if this was a different movie I'd think they were doing it ironically.

Perhaps if it was just a normal whistle it could have been a cool moment, but everything in this movie has to be so silly and ridiculous that they try to make a dramatic moment out of SpongeBob turning his fingers into a croissant and it doesn't work.

Sandy's family, however, fails to get the dome moving, so Sandy concludes that she needs "TWO families" to get the job done!

Besides being incredibly sappy and unapologetically corny, it's definitely a stretch to say Krabs and Squidward are her "second family."

SpongeBob continues to contribute nothing but unfunny quips in ill fitting places.

The two "families" are able to restart the machine, and launch the dome into space, and finally back down exactly where it started.

If anyone is still even reading this far, you may be thinking, "Well gee, it doesn't seem like Sandy really did that much in a movie all about her," and you'd be right!

Sandy couldn't defeat the snakes without her family, she couldn't take down Sue Nahmee without the two lab assistants, and she couldn't save the Bikini Bottom dome without her family (again)!!

Sandy is consistently undermined throughout this movie by the original characters.

The movie ends with the Cheeks family circus performing in Bikini Bottom, as Sandy sings a song with a weird filter over her voice (sure, why not)

The movie continues to try to drive home the whole "two families" thing, in my opinion fruitlessly.

Is this movie bad? Yes.

Is it the worst thing to come out of the SpongeBob franchise? Yes.

Does it have any redeeming qualities? Not really.

Watching this movie made me feel like I was chewed up and spit out...so I suppose you could say...