Ah, SpongeBob SquarePants, that irritatingly cute, yellow and porous friend of children, stoners and meme creators worldwide. While I freely admit to having watched The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie a lot as a kid and played the hell out of its video game tie-in on PS2, I’ve only watched a handful of episodes of the show proper and none of them are all that recent. Chalk it up to mostly sticking to the classic Cartoon Cartoons when I was a kid, but I never really got into them as much as I probably should have. That said, the show has its appeal… through being completely bonkers, even for a kid’s show, and having a more adult edge to its sense of humour on occasion much like the other show creator Stephen Hillenburg worked on: Rocko’s Modern Life. So, a little over a decade after the first film hit cinemas, the promotional campaign behind this latest offering reached our ears and even with my pretty surface interest in the show, I was hyped to see this thing.
The plot: Plankton (Mr. Lawrence) is trying to steal the secret formula for Mr. Krabs’ (Clancy Brown) Krabby Patties, but after a scuffle with SpongeBob (Tom Kenny), the formula is stolen from them both by the pirate Burger-Beard (Antonio Banderas). Forced to work together to bring order back to Bikini Bottom, Plankton joins SpongeBob, Mr. Krabs, Patrick (Bill Fagerbakke), Squidward (Rodger Bumpass) and Sandy (Carolyn Lawrence) as they venture to the surface to recover the formula.
Or, rather, this is the plot as far as the trailer would
have audiences believe. The story as shown there only makes up about a third of
the overall film, an action that I would call misleading if it wasn’t the most
sensible thing to do. Why? Because the sense that the remaining two-thirds don’t
make is staggering. Now, while I have bagged out other films in the past for
what little sense they make (*ahem*), I oddly don’t have a problem with it here
despite how much it feels like three or four scripts for episodes of the show
were stitched together with acid-laced dental floss. The first reason for this
is that the film doesn’t take itself seriously enough for that to be a genuine
issue; hell, there’s a moment in the film that almost feels like an attempt to
critic-proof it. The question gets brought up about how SpongeBob and the other
are able to breathe on the surface, and then they begin to summarise how they
got up there in the first place. It’s as if the writers were actively telling
the audience “You want to find logic in the movie where all this is happening? Seriously?” The
second reason for this is that, for as many tangents as the story takes itself
in, there’s a rather bizarre feeling of cohesion throughout the whole thing.
Seemingly random moments from earlier scenes come back to resolve moments in
the film’s present, a startling feat considering so many of them feel like they
shouldn’t even be in the same release year as each other.
The third reason, and easily the most important of them all,
is that this film’s humour is so pervasive that minor things like logic and
rationality ultimately don’t matter. Yes, the over-analytical douchebag who
takes pride in reading into as much subtext into films as possible is saying
that logic doesn’t matter this time around. *SPOILERS* It’s kind of difficult not to laugh at set pieces like the opening epic food fight scene
or the superhero chase in the streets, but the constant onslaught of puns and
bizarrely written dialogue makes the script feel like a boxer trying to induce
punch drunk laughter. It doesn’t hurt that said funny moments are delivered by
a damn nice cast of voice actors, all of whom have had several years of
practice spouting complete nonsense for the franchise that shows well here; oh,
and Antonio Banderas as well, bringing yet another performance just brimming
with maniacal glee. Whether their work here, or the film in general, matches up
to the show or if it even should match
up to it given the backlash towards the show nowadays from its fan base, I honestly
can’t say but all I get from this is that it sounds good to me.
That said, though, I can’t help but compare this to the
previous SpongeBob film and unfavourably compare it at that; this film’s
greatest strength, its care-free need to have fun, is also its greatest fault
in this regard. While this film is just pure fun, that film had a far stronger script to back it up. It may have
dipped into generic fantasy territory with its main plot, but its core theme of
holding onto one’s childhood was surprisingly potent and culminated in what I
still consider to be one of the most badass film climaxes I’ve seen with the
Twisted Sister parody I’m A Goofy Goober. Nothing in this film really reaches
that same level of awe, or at least the warped geeked-out feeling that fills in
the hole awe usually resides in within my brain.
Since this is a largely animated film, and we’re nearing the
end of this review (I know, I’m sad too), I guess I should talk about the
animation quality here and not only is it pretty good across the board, there
are some nice varieties of it to be found here as well. We have the
higher-quality version of the show’s look with the scenes set in and around
Bikini Bottom, we have the computer animated scenes on the surface that
genuinely had me fooled at a couple of moments and then we have the trippy and
almost psychedelic time travel transitions (Yeah, there’s time travel in this
movie too; and intergalactic overseer dolphins!) that will cause more than a
few head tilts with just how… I don’t even the sequences can get. There’s also
the scene set inside SpongeBob’s mind, and major props to the animation
department there for making such a bright and cheery scene that unsettling and
kind of creepy; I’d be screaming too, if I had to see all that.
All in all, this movie is a big jumbled mess of something
resembling a narrative, but the humour and overall sense of fun that permeate
every aspect of the production, from the voice acting to the animation,
bizarrely makes up for all that. I can’t say that I prefer this over the first
film, but it definitely fits in with what I remember of the show in terms of
entertainment value. It gives a feeling of ease and euphoria that will
definitely stick with you for a while after watching it… which probably
explains why this review is a bit zanier than I usually write. If you like the show in any regard, then chances are you’ll like this
one; if you don’t, then I doubt that this will convert you.
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