Are you ready kids? I can’t hear you…After a couple of years of playing studio calendar hopscotch and getting rescheduled at least half a dozen times, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run is finally making its debut Thursday (March 4) on new streaming service Paramount+.
The live-action/animated addition to the SpongeBob film series follows SpongeBob (Tom Kenny) and his best friend Patrick (Bill Fagerbakke) as they go on a quest to find SpongeBob’s pet snail Gary, who has been snail-napped. Now in the hands of King Poseidon (Matt Berry), who needs Gary’s slime as a rejuvenation skin cream, SpongeBob and Patrick do everything possible to bring Gary home safely. Along the way to the underwater lost city of Atlantic City, they accept the help of Sage, a transcendent tumbleweed that features the face of actor Keanu Reeves.
In a series of flashbacks, audiences also get a chance to see how SpongeBob and some of the main characters like Squidward, Sandy, Patrick and Gary first meet at summer camp when they were younger.
Fans of SpongeBob are going to love the weird and wacky new adventure he goes on in the new movie. And with cameos like Reeves and Snoop Dogg and voice work by Awkwafina, Tiffany Haddish and Reggie Watts, it’s bound to impress new audiences, too.
In fact, Latinos should be pleased with some of the decisions made in the film. One might even argue that The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run is actually a Latino movie. (The most obvious reason is because he lives in a dang pineapple, mi gente! It’s a fruit indigenous to South America!) Here are four really great reasons this sequel should feature a main character named Bob Esponja.
Antonio Raul Corbo Plays Young SpongeBob
Young actor Antonio Raul Corbo (TV’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine), who is of Mexican and Italian descent, gives voice to the young version of SpongeBob during a series of flashback scenes where audiences get to see how SpongeBob and his friends meet when they were kids. Corbo recorded his voice for the movie when he was eight years old. He is now an 11-year-old in the sixth grade. “The movie is very adorable,” Corbo told Remezcla during a recent interview. “There are a lot of fun adventures that happen.”
Danny Trejo Has a Cool Cameo
Trejo is no stranger to playing a villain and in the new SpongeBob movie, he’s the baddest of the baddies. He portrays El Diablo, the leader of a group of flesh-eating cowboy pirate zombies. SpongeBob and Patrick are in serious trouble when they realize El Diablo wants to destroy them. However, they do have time to do the “Thriller” dance first. Maybe the El Diablo character could spin-off into its own movie series. Dressed in pirate regalia, Trejo looks like he should be the captain of the Latino Black Pearl.
Tainy & J. Blavin Perform ‘Agua’
When can we start making suggestions for Best Song of the Year? We jest (sort of), but “Agua,” the reggaeton song Tainy and J. Blavin perform at the end of the film is so catchy, you’ll be whistling the SpongeBob ditty all day long and not even know it. “Esto es un party por debajo del agua/Baby, busca tu paragua.” Guess Bad Bunny should make the next move and record a song for the Zootopia sequel.
SpongeBob Lives in a Pineapple Under the Sea
Just like the lyrics to the theme song say, the absorbent, yellow and porous title character lives inside a pineapple. A pineapple! Pineapples are indigenous to South America. Costa Rica and Brazil are two of the biggest producers of the fruit. It can be traced back to being cultivated by the Tupinambá people living near what is known today as Rio de Janiero. What does SpongeBob have to do to prove that he’s Latino? Sprinkle it with lime juice and Tajín?
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run is currently streaming on Paramount+.