Monday, February 9, 2015

The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water Review

The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water
Director: Paul Tibbit, Mike Mitchell 
Cast Headliners: Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Mr.Lawrence, Antonio Banderas 
Original Release Date: February 6th, 2015


 
 Sometimes one must think of the tough questions, like “who lives in a pineapple under the sea?”  After nearly a decade later, the resident of said aquatic fruit is back with a new film in The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.  Now there are no references to the first film, so in some regards this is a very loose sequel.   But the nice thing about Spongebob Squarepants is its easy to jump in anytime.
            The film starts typically enough, with Spongebob (Tom Kenny) , Patrick (Bill Fagerbakke), Squidward (Rodger Bumpass) and Mr.Krabs (Clancy Brown) defending the Krusty Krab restaurant against another usual sort of attack by the villain Plankton (Mr. Lawrence).  The nice surprise of the film is that it is actually mostly in 2d unlike what the trailers would have one believe, and like the first movie it exists (mostly) as a really long episode of the television show with slightly better animation quality.   The main plot happens when the Krabby Patty formula goes missing, leading to a time-travelling adventure where amusingly the rivals of Spongebob and Plankton must work together to save their town of Bikini Bottom.  The writing is just as silly as the show, and the fact that this is a film allows things to get a bit crazier than usual. There is a large extended cast from the show as well, including Gary the snail and Sandy the squirrel (Carolyn Lawrence).
            However, the trailers and title of the film do exist for a reason.  There’s a bizzare overarching plot where pirate Burgerbeard (Antonio Banderas) is reading a storybook about all of these events occurring.  He does a wonderfully hammy performance as the pirate, and the main crew of nautical characters is forced to confront him in the “real world” once they find out about his deeds. This end-segment, and other live action portions showing Burgerbeard, are not quite as good as the 2d parts. The CGI visuals of Spongebob and friends look slightly off, and it really feels like a separate movie.   For better or worse this portion flies by though.
            The whole movie flies by in fact since it is just over a hour and a half long.  The story unfolds as a series of brief jokes and weird twists, and while lacking in substance that’s perhaps the best way it should be.  One will have some laughs over its brief runtime. For a Spongebob movie, it works again more or less. 7.6 out of 10

No comments:

Post a Comment