This film was notable in that it was quickly produced to cash in on the success of Silly Bandz.
A group of living novelty shaped rubber bands fall out of a truck in the middle of the desert. They desire to be played with by children and seek to get to the Big Box store so they can achieve this goal. Along the way, they meet a regular rubber band who teaches them about the world.
Tropes seen in Bands on the Run include:
- And the Adventure Continues: The rubber bands end up around kids' wrists, as they hoped, and those kids then go on many trips, shown as photos on a table.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Rubber bands are secretly alive in the movie's world, although their speech can't be heard by humans. It's also implied that every item that contains rubber is sentient, but only rubber bands do anything.
- Animation Bump: More of a Lighting Bump than anything, but the way a scene is lit is a dead giveaway on who animated which scene. If the lighting is slightly more realistic, it's by Elastic Productions, while if it looks worse, then it's by C.Y.UNS Information Technologies.
- Contrived Coincidence: The bands end up in a bowl on a paperboy's desk. The paperboy grabs a random handful of rubber bands from the bowl, and by coincidence, all of the main characters are used to tie up the same newspaper.
- Covers Always Lie: The cover has 2D artwork on it in place of screenshots, while the film itself is in CGI.
- Flight: Amelia the airplane band claims she can fly, but just never feels like it, and whenever something launches the bands into the air, she insists it's because of her abilities. When the bands are blown out of the flower garden, she finally shows that she wasn't lying about her skill, as she successfully grabs all the other bands.
- Hair-Raising Hare: Subverted. The bands are terrified of the rabbit, which is much bigger than them, but it just hops away without doing anything.
- Hurricane of Puns:
- At the beginning of the movie, the truck drivers are listening to a radio show called The Daily Bunny Joke Hour which consists entirely of rabbit-themed puns.
- Every rubber band makes puns about the shape they are. For example, Roxy the rock star rubber band will say "that rocks" when she likes something.
- Limited Animation: All over the place, due to the low budget. Especially noticeable in the scenes animated by C.Y.UNS.
- Mentor Archetype: Stretch, a normal rubber band who has seen many uses, teaches the protagonists about the ups and downs of a rubber band's life.
- Named After Somebody Famous: Edison the lightbulb is named after Thomas Edison, while Amelia the airplane is named after Amelia Earhart.
- Reincarnation: Rubber bands that are too old and lose their elasticity get melted down at the recycling centre to become something new, which is portrayed as an equivalent to reincarnation. Slim, Stretch's friend, hopes that his rubber will be used to make a rubber ball.
- Writing Around Trademarks: The Silly Bandz are never called that. They're just called "Bands".
- Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: The bands almost get collected by some kids at the gas station, but their mother stops them from picking up what she thinks is random trash.
