So I watched The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water

I was quite excited to see this movie – I’m a fan of the Spongebob TV series and I really enjoyed the first Spongebob movie. Unfortunately, when I finally got a chance to see it in theatres I was so exhausted that I ended up sleeping through most of it. Now that I’ve seen the movie in its entirety, I realise that me falling asleep wasn’t so much a sign of fatigue but rather boredom.

Okay, basic plot: Things in Bikini Bottom are as great as ever. The Krusty Krab – with Spongebob (Tom Kenny) as its fry-cook – still serves the best food and easily beats out its rival, The Chum Bucket, run by the villainous Plankton (Mr. Lawrence). Plankton continuously tries to steal the secret formula to the Krabby Patty but is always foiled by Spongebob and Mr Krabs (Clancy Brown). One day the secret formula goes missing and everyone immediately assumes that Plankton has stolen it. Without the Krabby Patty, Bikini Bottom descends into a lawless, post-apocalyptic wasteland. Spongebob is the only one who believes Plankton is innocent and, together, the pair embark on a journey to find the formula and restore order to their home.

This movie is astronomically disappointing. It feels like it’s lacking a real sense of purpose and direction. This film is about an hour and a half long and it takes an hour for us to get to the main plot and conflict. This film reminds me a great deal of Tomorrowland because both films make the same mistake. They both dedicate far too much time to building-up to the adventure and leave themselves almost no time to actually begin it. This film is called Spongebob: SPONGE OUT OF WATER but they don’t leave the water until the last thirty minutes of the film. So in my head, this means the film doesn’t begin until the last thirty minutes and I have to question the logic behind that. What’s with this trend in Hollywood of naming a movie something and then not featuring that thing in the actual movie? We had Amazing Spider 2, which featured almost no Spiderman. Godzilla with almost no Godzilla. Tomorrowland with only twenty minutes in Tomorrowland. What’s next? A new Toy Story movie with no toys?

I could have tolerated this film’s lack of direction if it was just better made. The writing feels lazy and lacks detail. We never get a true sense of why anything is happening or why characters are behaving the way that they are. It’s all far too vague and lacking definition. In retrospect, this film’s second act has almost no impact on the final outcome of this film. The second act functions only to kill time until the ending of the movie is ready to happen. This is time that could have been used on character development and to touch-up the many ill-conceived plot points in this film. Screenwriters, Paul Hibbit and Stephen Hillenburg really could have done a better job refining this script and tightening up certain plot holes.

You often hear rumours that the people behind our favourite cartoon characters were often using a multitude of drugs and that’s how they came up with these wonderful and weird stories. There’s a character in this film called Bubbles and I’m in no way insinuating that Hibbit and Hillenburg were on anything but when I saw him, I had to make sure that I wasn’t on anything. He’s such an odd character and I would have loved him if he had been anything more than just a plot device to get the screenwriters out of a hole they had written themselves in to.

I could have forgiven all of this film’s flaws if it had at least being wildly funny. I sat through the majority of this film with a straight face. There might have been a sporadic smile or chuckle that broke through but this was never consistently or uncontrollably. This film’s gags just didn’t work for me. Also I think they could have put in a little bit more into the budget for the live action part of the film so that everything didn’t look fake as hell.

Overall, The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water really let me down. It feels like it’s made by a bunch of people who really don’t like Spongebob and want to convert you into not liking him either. A fellow blogger described this movie to me and said, “it just didn’t work” and you know what? They were right. This film just doesn’t work and it’s a shame; but I hope we get more (better) Spongebob movies. I don’t recommend seeing this. 3/10