Ani-MAY-tion: The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004)

I cannot say that I am overly familiar with SpongeBob SquarePants, but I know enough about him to enjoy this movie. He lives in Bikini Bottom. He works at an underwater diner named the Krusty Krab. And he has a loyal friend named Patrick. I have somehow absorbed all of this information without ever having watched a full episode of the TV show, as far as I am aware. I have watched this movie before though, but I remembered nothing about it.

There are a number of enjoyable diversions here, but the core of the plot concerns SpongeBob and Patrick embarking on a long and dangerous journey to reclaim and return Neptune’s crown. Succeeding in this quest will save the life of their boss, Eugene Krabs, and foil the scheme of the nefarious Plankton, who also gets busy turning the residents of Bikini Bottom into mindless zombies (not the full-on horror type, just devoid of their own willpower and easily controlled by Plankton).

Bookended by scenes that show a rowdy gang of pirates hoping to enjoy the animated feature, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Movie is just about as much fun as you could expect it to be. It seems to keep the essence of the show and characters, increases the scale just enough to make it feel worth adapting into a movie, and delivers plenty of surreal hilarity in both rhe visuals and the dialogue.

Directed and co-written by SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg, with many others helping to knock the script into shape (and Mark Osborne credited for the live-action sequences), this feels like the kind of brilliant anarchy that you only get from someone who has negotiated their way to a place where they get to protect their vision with a final say on anything that will be delivered to the viewing public. Maybe that is exactly what happened, or maybe it is just a coincidence that Hillenburg had turned down numerous requests to turn his show into a movie before finally helming something that moved from the small screen to the big screen with such apparent ease.

The cast are mainly familiar to those who enjoy the show. Tom Kenny is SpongeBob, Bill Faggerbakke is Patrick, Rodger Bumpass is Squidward, Clancy Brown is Mr. Krab, and Mr. Lawrence is Plankton. All of them are superb, and they are joined by Jeffrey Tambor and Scarlett Johansson (playing Neptune and his daughter, respectively), Carolyn Lawrence and Jill Talley (both also reprising characters from the show), Alec Baldwin, and even the world’s most famous TV lifeguard, who pops up for a hilarious cameo that allows him to steal a couple of scenes.

I cannot think of anything here I would fault. While it may not make me rush off to watch every episode of the show, that is only because of me having only so many hours in each day. I will certainly be aiming to watch the other movies, at the very least, and I hope they come close to being as much fun as this one, which had me laughing pretty heartily from start to finish. I know that the silliness here isn’t for everyone, but I am certainly happy to be a goofy goober.

9/10

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