Review of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004) by Drew S — 05 Sep 2011

Bikini-bottom line: I used to be nuts about this movie when I was a wee child (actually 12 years old). SpongeBob was simply the funniest show on NickTV, so the feature film accentuated it.

The movie plays out like one long episode. It has all the humor and the entire ensemble cast from the show but mixes in a plot (think Dumb and Dumber). In fact, the creators were even considering making it an hour-long TV special before determining that a feature-film would be the wisest path for financial and critical success. Well, the movie certainly succeeded in that sense. Fans ate it up and it brought in the most money of any Nickelodeon feature film. However, considering it now, the SpongeBob Squarepants movie has aged a little bit. And being a fan, I'd rather watch the series than the movie any day of the given week.

The film's flaws lie in the very same reason that it's a success. It's a feature film, and because of this, hearing SpongeBob and Patrick's gimmicks and jocosity pervade our dopamine receptors for over an hour and a half becomes borderline gratuitous. It's like telling the same joke over and over. A better idea would be to watch three full episodes back to back--at least then the jokes (and plot) would be versatile. Another rather dismal consequence of the feature film was its effect on the TV show thereafter. When Stephen Hillenburg departed as creative director of the show, so did about half of his creative team--and the show afterwards sank into...well, rock bottom. This doesn't necessitate the quality of this film though. It's a well rounded-picture. It does, however, make the SpongeBob Squarepants movie a harbinger of the series inevitable decline. Might I go ahead and critique the drawings? Hillenburg's animation is usually comical for the TV show. In this movie, something happened not only to SpongeBob's frame but to the color palette as well (as if to suggest a five-year old seized control of the paint).

Nevertheless, the SpongeBob Squarepants Movie is a memorable film for those who were (and are still) fans of the series. It's sure to reawaken some nostalgia as well as enlighten those as a tribute for ending (what I believe) was an outstanding TV show in Nickelodeon's heydey. I resent what direction the show took afterwards, but at least somewhere at the far end of that infinite timeline of lunacy, SpongeBob will become the manager of the Krusty Krabs 2.