The Spongebob Squarepants Movie (2004) - Directed by Stephen Hillenburg
"I'm a goofy goober!"
Stephen Hillenburg, the creator of the famous Nickelodeon series
Spongebob Squarepants, passed away today at 57 years old due to Lou Gehrig's disease.
Spongebob wasn't just another classic Nickelodeon cartoon like
Rugrats or
The Fairly Oddparents. The sponge himself is an icon in modern society, and may very well be the modern Mickey Mouse. The show isn't any good without Hillenburg (the seasons without him got lame at times), so I'll honor him with a review of one of my favorite childhood films:
The Spongebob Squarepants Movie.
The world's favorite sea sponge has worked at the burger restaurant, The Krusty Krab, for years, and he's excited to become the manager of the new Krusty Krab 2. But his boss, Mr. Krabs doesn't give the job to him because Spongebob's still a kid. Then, when Mr. Krabs' rival, Plankton, steals the mighty King Neptune's crown and pins the blame on Mr. Krabs, Spongebob sets out with his best friend, Patrick, to get the crown, save the town and Mr. Krabs before Plankton rules the world!
OK, Nickelodeon movies have never been up there with
The Godfather and other similar movies, but they've had a good catalogue overall.
The Spongebob Squarepants Movie might be the studio's best movie. It gives fans exactly what they want from a Spongebob movie. It's got all the right kinds of humor such as Patrick's stupidity bordering on sassiness, Spongebob's naivete, occasional slapstick and gross-out humor, one-liners, animation from the team that brought us
Ren and Stimpy, the Spongebob works. And most of it is hilarious, which is why I've watched it so many times as a kid, and even in my early teen years because it's a bit hard to let go of Spongebob.
The movie's sense of stupidity in terms of real-world logic versus cartoon logic matches that from the cartoon series. We get to see David Hasselhoff manipulating the world around him with his Baywatch infused meme-hood, and the absurdities of "cyclopses" terrorizing the creatures of the sea for the sake of making knick-knacks. And of course, the magic of mustaches is never something to sneeze at. :P
I guess if I had to criticize it, it would be a very simple criticism: it's not the best Spongebob episode. If you're making a 90 minuteSpongebob episode, you should expect a couple of the gags to get old, or some of the gags to be chuckle worthy. When comparing it to other comedy movies, let's just say for a really good absurdist comedy, it's not
Monty Python and the Holy Grail. From a more artistic criticism, it doesn't give us anything new to the comedy table except a Spongebob movie. And while I have no complaints about that, don't expect the best movie ever from a movie based on a cartoon. It's a rarity, like
The End of Evangelion.
Despite my criticism, I still have to say it's great that the first Spongebob movie was so funny. That's all a person can really ask for from a Spongebob movie, and it delivers the desired package well enough to qualify as one of, if not the best Nickelodeon movie there's been so far. Stephen Hillenburg will be missed by the world, and we're glad he gave us something to love in this sad world that we often forget exists: something that makes us really happy. That something, or someone, is Spongebob Squarepants, who lives in a pineapple under the sea.