The Big Picture
- Sponge Out of Water is a much-needed return to form for the SpongeBob franchise, bringing back the humor and weirdness of the early seasons.
- The movie's second act, featuring time travel and a hilarious inter-dimensional dolphin character named Bubbles voiced by Matt Berry, is the highlight of the film.
- While the entire movie is a blast, the second act truly revives the iconic Nickelodeon franchise and showcases Stephen Hillenburg's triumphant return to his beloved characters.
The decade that followed the release of 2004's The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie led to a dry run of one uninspired, phoned-in season of SpongeBob after another, culminating in 2015's Sponge Out of Water, a film that is so bonkers that it makes up for years of lost time. SpongeBob's (Tom Kenny) second big screen outing isn't just a success, it feels like a fish who's been stranded on land for an entire decade, somehow has survived, and is finally being thrown back into the deep blue sea. Not only that, this fish is armed with psychedelics and caught a couple of Mad Max movies during his stint on land. Finally, after 11 years of forgettable seasons, SpongeBob was back in a big, big way. Sponge Out of Water isn't just good, it isn't just the best SpongeBob movie, it's one of the best, most insane releases in the entire franchise.
'The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie' Set the Bar High
The first three seasons of SpongeBob SquarePants are pretty perfect. Few animated shows come to mind that instantly had as big of an impact as Nickelodeon's crown jewel, so of course there had to be a movie. Series creator Stephen Hillenburg stepped up from running the show to directing the franchise's first movie, and the rest is history. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie didn't exactly demolish the box office, but it did do pretty solid business and has been beloved by fans of the series ever since. The movie ends in a way that doesn't only feel fitting for its own story, but for SpongeBob's story as a whole. It seems as though Hillenburg felt this way as well. With the release of the series' first movie, Hillenburg would step away from SpongeBob entirely and hand the keys off to one of the series' best writers, Paul Tibbitt. Considering this change in leadership, what came to pass could still have been great, but it feels as though everyone behind the scenes went into autopilot for the next 11 years.
SpongeBob was the biggest show on Nickelodeon by a landslide, the movie's loved by fans, what else was there to prove? Well by the time the idea of a second movie came around, there hadn't been a truly beloved episode released in years. Fans have their own ideas as to which episodes (post Season 3) are up to snuff with SpongeBob's Golden Era, but no one can land on the exact same page. Although SpongeBob was still standing as a titan of animation, the show didn't exactly have the same reputation it had leading into the first movie. The next SpongeBob SquarePants movie had to be great, and that it is.
'Sponge Out of Water' Is a Trippy Return to Form
After years of hoping for a return to form, Sponge Out of Water is exactly that. SpongeBob's second movie is so unbelievably funny that it feels like a throwback, not just to the first few seasons, but to Season 1 in particular. This movie is full of your typical SpongeBob antics, but it also has that weird and bizarre feeling that so many of the best SpongeBob SquarePants episodes after Season 1 didn't have. Believe me, there's a real "SB-129" feel to a lot of this movie. This has to have something to do with the fact that Paul Tibbitt wasn't just a showrunner this time around who was approving ideas for episodes and steering the series in a general direction, he was directing it and coming up with the movie's story. Tibbitt wasn't going to take this road alone. To craft the film's story, he brought on the help of an old friend, Stephen Hillenburg, the exact person that Sponge Out of Water needed.
The film follows Burger Beard (Antonio Banderas in live action!), a pirate who steals the Krabby Patty secret formula, sending Bikini Bottom into a post-apocalyptic state. In order to save the town, SpongeBob SquarePants and the gang go on a mission to the surface where they hope to face off against Burger Beard. Along the way, the movie takes tons of left turns. Depending on where you drop in, you'll find that Sponge Out of Water is a pirate movie, an end-times epic, a prison break thriller, a trippy time travel madhouse, or a superhero action extravaganza. In just over 90 minutes, this movie has it all. And no matter what sub-genre it ends up dabbling in, Sponge Out of Water is consistently hilarious. It's not a character study that's ripe with themes and bound to leave you with a heavy heart. No, this is just the sense of humor from the first three seasons coming back with a vengeance.
This movie is hilarious on the whole, but nothing brings back the original episodes' odd sense of humor than the movie's second act. This stretch spotlights SpongeBob and Plankton's (Mr. Lawrence) adventures through time and space to try and go back to the moment before the formula was taken. This is the most creative and, literally, out-of-this-world stretch that the SpongeBob franchise had seen in years. They travel to the future, where Bikini Bottom has been reduced to a desert landscape. In a panic, they accidentally send themselves to another time and place entirely: the home of Bubbles (Matt Berry), an inter-dimensional dolphin who watches over the galaxy.
Matt Berry's Bubbles the Dolphin Is a Wonderfully Weird Character
While the second act of the movie is mostly preoccupied with a decimated Bikini Bottom (whose citizens are decked out in leather and spikes), as well as a fun scene where SpongeBob and Plankton break Plankton's computer wife K.A.R.E.N., out of jail, this time travel segment is where it's at. The quick snapshots of SpongeBob and Plankton traveling through time portals are backed with the hilarious N.E.R.D. track "Squeeze Me," one that sounds like Patchy the Pirate smoked weed for the first time and forgot how to sing the SpongeBob theme song. The animation also finds itself going into a strange combination of paintings and CGI when these two are traveling through time, warping their body sizes and sending them past cosmic tacos turning them into endless rows of geometrical shapes. It's nuts.
The inclusion of Bubbles can't be overlooked, either. He's the funniest new character that the series had seen since the first film: an incredibly powerful celestial being who holds the fabric of the galaxy together, and occasionally and embarrassingly breaks out into dolphin noises. His photo-realistic look against SpongeBob and Plankton's designs also adds to this scene's hilariously odd feel. Just a fantastically conceived character. Bubbles is exactly what your life is missing.
'Sponge Out of Water' Revived the Iconic Nickelodeon Franchise
Outside of the second act, the first act is more of a return to form for SpongeBob SquarePants, with the Krusty Krew going up against the Chum Bucket once again. There are some fresh additions, like a few pretty funny CGI seagulls (RIP Kyle), and the very "kids' movie" addition of Burger Beard, but even he is a lot of fun. The third act is where things really shake up, though. Most of this movie's promotional material promises a CGI SpongeBob adventure, but that really only takes up the last 15 minutes or so. (It's pretty fun too!) The show's main cast all turn into superhero versions of their characters, and while it would've been funny to see the return of The International Justice League of Super Acquaintances members like The Quickster and The Elastic Waistband, these new versions are good enough.
Sponge Out of Water is exactly the kick that the SpongeBob franchise needed. It breathes new life and an inspired, strange sense of humor to the table that the series hadn't seen in over a decade, particularly with its incredible second act. It's sad to say that the series would return to its lackluster nature after this movie, and even turn in a pretty lousy third film, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run. But Sponge Out of Water is an absolute trip, the exact kind that early SpongeBob provided. If you're a big SpongeBob fan but never got around to the movie in fear that it would be a CGI mess, maybe cut an hour and a half out of your day and throw this one on. More than anything, it should be celebrated as Hillenburg's triumphant, gonzo return to the beloved characters that he introduced to us so long ago.
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