Review of Spongebob Squarepants: The Movie

Introduction

Living in idyllic naïveté in the underwater wonderland of Bikini Bottom, Spongebob`s key lifestyle concerns appear to be, how stoned he`s going to get off "ice-cream" that night, and what infantile mischief he can concoct with best-friend Patrick (a pink star-fish… which isn`t technically a fish… oh nevermind.) However when amoebae with an inferiority complex Plankton threatens Spongebob`s beloved home with an Orwellian mind-control device, our juvenile hero has to find the strength to stop said villain, meddle with a villainous assassin, and survive a jet-powered oceanic roller-coaster ride on the back of David Hasselhoff`s thighs.

Video

Insanely colourful animation, well presented.

Audio

Satisfying use of surrounds.

Features

Above average making of that successfully explores Spongebob`s transition to the big screen. An animatic demo and some trailers are pretty dull (although the teaser for the movie is a sly little delight.) Best in show however is a documentary connecting the movie`s surreal characters to their real life undersea binaries, complete with narration from a Costeau-esque explorer, who handles the flippancy of the piece with disarming good humor.

Conclusion

Hilariously twisted. The Klasky-Csupo/Nickelodean style animation brand has been the source of many delights over the years, with `Ren and Stimpy` being perhaps the most memorable blend of its subtle twist on an over-familiar medium: cartoons where the content is as subversive as the visuals.

Perhaps inevitably, the content of `The Spongebob Squarepants Movie` has been softened somewhat for the sake of mass appeal, but perhaps only to the extent that it follows a standard, and fairly uninteresting road-movie/quest plot format. It`s here however, that the Disney-fication stops. The plot skews and parries off into totally surreal tangents… and then runs with it, to frequently excellent results: the films final action set-piece takes place on a speeding David Hasselhoff, a snappy take on the overblown spectacles of Pixar finales.

The oddball humour comes in thick and fast, with both silly slapstick that will amuse the rugrats (and lets face it, most adults) and some witty cinematic intertexts and riffs on consumerism that will appeal to grown-ups. Admittedly, the talented assembled voice-cast (Jeffrey Tambor, Scarlett Johansson, Alec Baldwin ) never really break out from under the madly busy aesthetic, and `Spongebob`, like most of the Nickelodean TV-movie transfers, never really feels that cinematic. And if there`s a curious feeling permeating throughout your viewing (I am of course assuming here that your age stretches into double figures) that you don`t really understand what the Hell is going on, `Spongebob` is that rare kid`s movie that effortlessly converts such mild confusion into sheer pleasure.