SpongeBob (Tom Kenny) is in awe of his boss Mr Krab’s (Clancy Brown) stories of his adventurous past. Longing to be just like his hero, he summons a ghost pirate (Mark Hamill) to teach him how to buckle a swash — but the captain has other plans…
Roughly every five years, a new SpongeBob SquarePants movie comes along and inflicts another hallucinatory, surreal adventure on children and their unwary cinemagoing parents. Sometimes these big-screen outings featuremoments of madcap inspiration: Keanu Reeves appearing as a sage tumbleweed, for example, or David Hasselhoff playing a speedboat. More often, they’re simply exhausting. Let’s just say that this one contains no demented celebrity cameos, and is all the poorer for it.
To the extent that its plot matters, heroic sea sponge SpongeBob (Tom Kenny) conceives a desire to become a “big guy”. To that end, he and his bestie, starfish Patrick (Bill Fagerbakke), blow an enchanted horn to summon the Flying Dutchman (Mark Hamill) and learn how to be swashbuckling pirates. Alas, the cursed pirate plans to double-cross them and use their quest to undo his own gloomy fate. But first he’ll be driven barmy by their good-natured attempts to help him out, and their blithe knack for surviving the underworld to which he consigns them.
Of course, none of that matters. This is sugar-high kids’ cinema, designed to be enjoyed by an undemanding audience who are tripping out on E-numbers and slushies. The plot is a threadbare fir tree that’s only standing so that it can be bedecked with a lot of silly jokes, angry rants and assorted gurning, which is the real reason that fans of the cartoon are there. On those criteria this film delivers, but especially as our heroes reach the surface world it seems a little flatter than its predecessors.
SpongeBob himself still manages his trademark blend of finely judged stupidity and well-intentioned nonsense, but while things happen non-stop, there’s nothing new or particularly exciting for him to face. That’s not to say he should grow or change — Seinfeld rules about “no learning” very much apply to a character as delightfully dumb as this — but we needed a little more inventiveness to the mayhem than this low-key film can provide.
It’s relentless and exhausting for adults, but kids and die-hard SpongeBob fans may find something to love here as the consistently cheery fry cook once again out-dimwits a dastardly foe.
