THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SEARCH FOR SQUAREPANTS:
FOURTH SPONGEBOB MOVIE MOSTLY TREADS FAMILIAR WATERS!
By Nico Beland
Movie Review: ** ½ out of 4
PARAMOUNT ANIMATION AND NICKELODEON MOVIES
SpongeBob Squarepants and Patrick Star in The SpongeBob Movie: The Search for SquarePants
The lovable sea sponge and his goofy starfish best friend return to the big screen in The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants, the fourth feature film based on Nickelodeon’s long-running and incredibly popular animated series, SpongeBob Squarepants. If you read my reviews for The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge On the Run then you know that as a kid, I loved SpongeBob and for a while, it was my favorite show on Nickelodeon with its colorful cast of memorable characters, silly animation, and surprisingly clever writing that only gets better and funnier as you get older (The first 3 seasons at least).
For the most part I’ve enjoyed SpongeBob’s previous theatrical outings with 2004’s The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie being a nostalgic film I hold near and dear to my heart (I saw that film in theaters when I was 11 years old). I also liked the second film from 2015, Sponge Out of Water and how it leaned more into the absurd and bizarre humor from the show.
The third movie, Sponge On the Run from 2021 was fine, but I got a few laughs here and there, it requires a lot of thought to cast Keanu Reeves as a talking tumbleweed. It was the weakest of the SpongeBob films and had some sour points (Namely retconning everything), but it was mostly harmless.
Now we have this fourth movie (Not counting the two Netflix SpongeBob movies), The Search for SquarePantswith animation director Derek Drymon (Rocko’s Modern Life, Hey Arnold, Camp Lazlo) helming it and Mark Hamill (Star Wars franchise, DC Animated Universe, The Long Walk) as The Flying Dutchman. This one I had absolutely zero expectations for, I wasn’t excited for it but was certain to get some laughs out of it because it’s SpongeBob, even the last movie did.
Well, I can definitely say I did laugh at times during the film, but this one mostly left me feeling completely indifferent. I wouldn’t call it terrible or even bad, but it’s a film that repeats several plot points from past episodes and movies and doesn’t really offer much new to warrant this cinematic venture.
The film follows SpongeBob Squarepants (voiced by Tom Kenny-The Powerpuff Girls, Adventure Time,Transformers franchise) who his determined to be a “Big Guy” so, he and his best friend, Patrick Star (voiced by Bill Fagerbakke-Gargoyles, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Transformers Animated) set off to prove SpongeBob’s bravery to his boss, Mr. Krabs (voiced by Clancy Brown-DC Animated Universe, Crash Bandicoot franchise, Flubber). However, their quest finds them unleashing the sinister ghost pirate, The Flying Dutchman (voiced by Hamill) who takes them along on a swashbuckling adventure, but secretly has other plans while Mr. Krabs, Squidward Tentacles (voiced by Rodger Bumpass-Toxic Crusaders, Invader Zim, Teen Titans), and SpongeBob’s pet snail, Gary follow The Flying Dutchman to rescue SpongeBob and Patrick.
The film also features the voices of Carolyn Lawrence (Spyro the Dragon franchise, Jimmy Neutron franchise,Moral Orel) reprising her role as Sandy Cheeks, Mr. Lawrence (Rocko’s Modern Life, Camp Lazlo) reprising his role as Sheldon J. Plankton, and Regina Hall (Scary Movie franchise, About Last Night (2014), One Battle After Another) as Barb.
Overall, The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants will likely entertain kids and SpongeBob devotees, but outside of some decent laughs and moments of weirdness, the fourth SpongeBob theatrical movie is pretty shallow and repetitive with its storytelling. The plot is almost like a complete retread of the first SpongeBob movie where it was about him proving to everyone that he’s a man and not just a kid and there was even an entire episode of the series where SpongeBob and Patrick become crewmates of The Flying Dutchman so already nothing is that special about this film’s storyline because we’ve already seen them.
However, it does seem like the story was seen as an afterthought with much of the focus going towards comedy and slapstick and boy, they really cranked up the “yuks” with this one. Whether it’s SpongeBob and Patrick laughing while doing goofy things or the film’s constant barrage of butt jokes, it is clearly trying to make you laugh every step of the way and your enjoyment of it will depend on your tolerance of that kind of humor.
With that said, there are moments I did find genuinely hilarious with my favorite being this roller coaster early on that SpongeBob and Patrick are waiting in line for now that SpongeBob is classified as a “Big Guy” before realizing how intense the ride actually is. It was honestly a gag that reminded me a lot of classic SpongeBob writing and got the biggest laugh out of me.
The CG animation got an update compared to Sponge On the Run and looks a lot crisper and more visually pleasing this time around. That’s not to say Sponge On the Run had bad animation, but it seemed like it was going for a more stylized look whereas this feels more like 2D SpongeBob just with 3D textures and leads itself to some colorful and imaginative sequences.
Brian Doyle-Murray’s voice as The Flying Dutchman from the original series is iconic and will always be the voice I hear in my head when I see the character, but Mark Hamill is a lot of fun here. Sure, he sounds like a pirate version of the Joker half the time, but he is having a ball chewing on the dialogue and unleashing his crazy side.
One major downgrade from this movie compared to the previous sequels is every character was prominent in the second and third films while in this it’s a B-Plot involving Mr. Krabs, Squidward, and Gary with characters like Sandy and Plankton being pushed off to the side. I love seeing these characters together in a group interacting with each other, why make Sandy and Plankton glorified cameos?
Yeah, this is my least favorite of the theatrical SpongeBob movies, it isn’t terrible and there are some funny and inventive scenes, but the plot is too derivative of previous episodes and movies and major players from the SpongeBobseries get side-lined. Oh well, at least the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Christmas short preceding the film was pretty solid.
No comments:
Post a Comment