Everyone’s favorite Bikini Bottom resident is starring in a brand new film. No, not SpongeBob (though he’s still a main character). The focus, for the first time, is all on Sandy Cheeks, the squirrel scientist from Texas who came undersea to Bikini Bottom to do valuable research.

She’s the star of the newest SpongeBob SquarePants movie, Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie, now streaming on Netflix. Things start great, with a strong Sandy-led musical number, but when the plot sets in gear and the gang goes above water, the wheels come off faster than you can sing the show’s theme song.

A promising part of spinoffs is getting to know underappreciated characters: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, for example, gave audiences a deeper understanding of the tabby cat that allowed us to fall deeper in love with him. The Sandy Cheeks Movie offers that same thrilling prospect but woefully underdelivers on its promise.

Instead of getting to know Sandy, the film throws a bunch of new characters into the mix—Sandy’s entire family is introduced, who are all one-note and are stereotypical Southern archetypes instead of fleshed-out characters. The family dynamics should, in theory, tell us a lot more about who Sandy is, but the film never dives deeper than the fact that Sandy........

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