The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water

SpongeBob Squarepants became an important part of my childhood unwillingly, or more precisely, out of social pressure. I was never interested in any series by Nickelodeon, but back in my primary school days, they were a hit along with some Cartoon Network shows, Dragon Ball Z and Pokémon, the latter also being a choice made because of peer pressure. The school bus of my generation was fantastic. We were a very close group and discussed our favorite shows often. I wasn’t that much of a fan of TV, but SpongeBob always had to be mentioned. We were below ten years old, so what could I expect?

So this one unforgettable day I decided to watch an episode and have something to talk about the next day. I remember that chapter eidetically. It featured a plot twist of Patrick disguised as a gorilla, and a freakin’ scary live-action gorilla disguised as Patrick which, after revealing his identity, proceeds to put them in a sack and start to brutally punch them. I was so shocked by this mix of animation with live-action effects (it wasn’t very common really) that I didn’t even pay attention to the comical sound effects. Then SpongeBob proceeds to get ripped in half by the gorilla’s hands and then rides into the sunset on a fake horse. All of this epicness occurs underwater. The chapter ends with a shocked real-life family watching said episode, hence reaching meta levels, and they turn off the TV in disapproval.

What in the unholy name of arse had I seen? Well, today such episode is considered as one of the most inventive and original episodes of the series.

Then I got submerged into the beautiful culture of YouTube Poops, both in English and in Spanish: there are wonderfully talented people working in many languages. Not all good YTPs are in English. Anyway, hundreds were made out of the SpongeBob Squarepants episodes, so in a very bizarre and indirect way, got familiarized with the characters, their voices and personalities and every other single element that is trademark of the series. Then I saw the originals out of curiosity and couldn’t look at them in the same way because, you know, YouTube Poops. They’re awesome. They destroy everything.

So, I saw the series between the age of 18 and 25, when nobody else was interested, and I didn’t see it when everybody was. Damn this condition of being atypical in many aspects of my life.

SO (three paragraphs have already begun with that word), everything I saw in this film was familiar to me. The series, nevertheless, is random by nature, and hence, it is unexpected... and randomness it provided. As the secret formula of Mr. Krabs gets stolen, Bikini Bottom falls into a Mad-Max leathered post-apocalyptic setting. Why? Why not?! It’s SpongeBob! Add to this mixes of stop motion effects, a dolphin divinity and delicious time-travel sequences and you got one entertaining ride featuring Antonio Banderas in a role as campy as anything he has done before. Yes, that includes the NC-17 rated Almodóvar of the eighties.

This film, I feel, does not deserve to be this good. However, it has some secret power that makes you enjoy it. It is also very important to note that back when I was 14 in 2004, people of my age still saw the series and the first film was a huge hit. As you have naturally guessed, I haven’t seen it even up to this day, but I remember my friends telling me what the jokes were, and I remember the jokes, so if I see it, those moments of my adolescence will come back. Hence, this is my first feature experience with this Nickelodeon character.

The film was very misleadingly marketed as being an adventure comedy taking place in the real world with 3D characters; little did we know that such thing only happens for 33.33% of the time. The rest is a standard prolonged episode with the same experimental humor and creatively WTF moments that plagued the series since its origins. When I saw the trailer, I thought it would be an abomination comparable to the awful The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (2000), but it wasn’t entirely. Not at least for an hour. However, when the live-action segment finally kicks in, it is not really that bad. Not with Banderas in it and with meta references to the concept of how the screenwriting process affects a story.

Bottom line, there are concepts that I enjoyed how they were developed. The character is still a mechanism for mixing the real world with the animated world, an idea that all of us fantasized with our favorite animated characters when we were kids. Perhaps they executed this idea a little bit too late, but at least the reception wasn’t as atrocious as I was expecting it to be given how misleading the publicity and the trailers were, and I must say that I was more entertained by it than I ever imagined. I must once again highlight the time-travel sequences, the scene inside SpongeBob’s brain and the delivery of the phrase “welcome to the apocalypse, Mr. Squidward. I hope you like leather” as the things that got me the most.

46/100

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