The characters and nautical nonsense are entertaining enough for a while, but ultimately they should stay under the sea, and on the small screen.
By RICK GERSHMAN
Published November 18, 2004
[Paramount Pictures]
In The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, SpongeBob, center, and Patrick, right, unite to find the crown of King Neptune, which was stolen and sold. Along the way they encounter Mindy, King Neptune's daughter.
Odds are, the parents of kids born in the 1990s have SpongeBob SquarePants fans living under their roofs.
They've bought their charges the SpongeBob toothbrush and bedsheets, the lunch box and backpack. At least this particular obsession doesn't require purchasing 10-million playing cards of critters with names like Pikachu.
And there's no way we can help get them out of taking their SpongeBob supporters to see The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. Lucky for them, this is by no means the worst movie out there. (That would be Seed of Chucky.) But when two awesome family flicks are on offer (The Incredibles and The Polar Express), it's hard to ignore just how lukewarm SpongeBob is.
It's a pleasant enough diversion, with enjoyably quirky humor. But big-screen adaptations tend to show off small-screen limitations, and SpongeBob takes on water quickly.
SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg and a team of co-writers fashioned the film as a road-trip adventure. Our titular sponge (voice of Tom Kenny) and his starfish buddy, Patrick Star (voice of Bill Fagerbakke), leave Bikini Bottom to retrieve King Neptune's crown, which was stolen and sold to Shell City by the villainous Plankton.
Along the way, SpongeBob and Patrick run into a lot of weird, creepy characters. And that's not even including David Hasselhoff.
Yep, that's Baywatch's Hasselhoff, whose all-too-extended cameo - guaranteeing big box office numbers in Germany, one figures - showed up in the trailers, so we note it here. Plus, fair warning should be given that the climactic showdown between our heroes and an Alec Baldwin-voiced biker takes place largely on Hasselhoff's backside and his way-too-furry-for-that-closeup legs.
But that's in keeping with SpongeBob sensibilities, which in this version seem to owe a lot more to John Kricfalusi's brilliantly bizarre Ren & Stimpy Show than Hillenburg's SpongeBob precursor, Rocko's Modern Life.
Hillenburg's team came up with some cute bits, such as fashioning Baldwin's bad-boy biker after Randall "Tex" Cobb's Leonard Smalls character from the Coen brothers' Raising Arizona. And it's hard to fault a soundtrack that boasts alt-rock luminaries Ween, Wilco, the Shins and the Flaming Lips, along with a twist on a Twisted Sister track.
Overall, though 30 minutes of SpongeBob and company is harmless enough, at 90 minutes they're all wet.
THE SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS MOVIE
GRADE: C
DIRECTORS: Sherm Cohen, Stephen Hillenburg, Mark Osborne
CAST: Voices of Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Mr. (Doug) Lawrence, Alec Baldwin, Scarlett Johansson, David Hasselhoff
SCREENPLAY: Derek Drymon, Tim Hill, Stephen Hillenburg, Kent Osborne, Aaron Springer, Paul Tibbett
