Director – Derek Drymon – 2025 – US – Cert. PG – 96m
*****
SpongeBob is duped by a ghostly pirate into undertaking a quest in the underworld which will have disastrous consequences for him – anarchic and inventive animation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 26th
The big day has arrived. SpongeBob SquarePants (voice: Tom Kenny) has finally reached the height of 36 clamshells. This means he can fulfil his dream – going on the fairground rollercoaster ride. As he bottles out, an opportunity presents itself: the chance to become a certified swashbuckler like the employer he so admires, Mr. Krabs (voice: Clancy Brown).
Thus SpongeBob joins ghostly pirate the Flying Dutchman (voice: Mark Hamill), the curse of the seven seas, on a quest into the underworld resembling the numbered stages of a computer game. However, our hero has been duped; the Flying Dutchman can only rid himself of the curse which traps him in the state of a ghost by transferring it to someone else – and SpongeBob is the fall guy. Can our hero’s friends Patrick (voice: Bill Fagerbakke), accompanying him on his quest, and Mr. Krabs and Squidward (voice: Roger Bumpass), who set out in hot pursuit, save him?
The perfunctory plot does the job more than adequately, but that’s not what’s great about this movie. And this is a great movie. I fell in love with it about 30 seconds in with a sight gag wherein a brick appears on the ground behind SpongeBob’s nether regions, a visual pun on a crude if popular figure of speech which will be understood by adults even as it flies over the heads of blissfully unaware kids.
Not all the sight gags are as crude, but the animated movie is crammed with visual inventiveness, much of it similarly rapid fire, although the character animation coupled with the overall technical use of the medium, 3D-rendered computer animation, is likewise impressive. It’s light years away from and miles ahead of the formularised denouement that constitutes so much of contemporary Hollywood’s animated feature output.
The finale combines live action with animation as the villain, released from his curse, chills out at the beach while SpongeBob attempts to break the villain’s horn before sunset which will revert the curse off SpongeBob and back onto the Flying Dutchman.
Indeed, although it’s in colour and makes use of the latest, state-of-the-art animation technology, it reminded me of nothing so much as the (mostly) black and white, wonderfully anarchic shorts of the Fleischer Brothers (Out of the Inkwell, Betty Boop, Popeye) in the 1930s, before it was even considered feasible to make animated features. Amazingly, because this usually doesn’t work, the characters and plot sustain a sight gag fest over the length of the feature. A real treat for adults and kids alike.
Also includes the surprisingly memorable song Big Guy by rapper Ice Spice.
The feature is accompanied by the well-crafted, animated short Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Chrome Alone 2 – Lost in New Jersey (Kent Seki, 2025, 7m) which through the nefarious activities of its villain accurately portrays the shortcomings of AI with regard to human creativity, the arts and creative industries.
The Spongebob Movie: Search for Squarepants is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, December 26th.
Trailer: