{"id":34888,"date":"2015-02-09T09:38:58","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T14:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=34888"},"modified":"2015-02-09T09:38:58","modified_gmt":"2015-02-09T14:38:58","slug":"the-spongebob-movie-sponge-out-of-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2015\/02\/the-spongebob-movie-sponge-out-of-water\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I watched a few episodes of the \u201cSpongeBob SquarePants\u201d cartoon to get me in the mood for \u201cThe SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.\u201d I know I\u2019m not their target audience, but I also know that I\u2019ve laughed at a few of them over the years. The research turned out to be a bad idea. Not only does the juvenile humor not hold up for me, but I got more than my fill of the SpongeBob character. A little bit of SpongeBob goes a long way with his squeaky voice and unrelenting chipperness, and the last thing this movie needs is to have the viewer already sick of him before they enter the theater.<\/p>\n

A quick intro to the characters and setting: SpongeBob (Tom Kenny) is a hopelessly upbeat sea sponge who lives at the bottom of the sea in a town called Bikini Bottom. His best friends are a dimwitted starfish named Patrick (Bill Fagerbakke) and a scuba-diving squirrel named Sandy (Carolyn Lawrence). He also finds time to annoy his neighbor Squidward (Roger Bumpass). He works at a fast food restaurant called The Krusty Krab, owned by the jolly-but-greedy Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown), serving the eatery\u2019s signature Krabby Patties to a community that apparently revolves around fast food. Occasionally he has to play security, protecting the burger\u2019s secret formula from rival restauranteur Plankton (Mr. Lawrence).<\/p>\n

For the movie, the secret formula is indeed stolen, not by Plankton, but by a human (and live-action) pirate called Burger Beard (Antonio Banderas). Initially the town thinks that Plankton stole the formula with the help of SpongeBob and there are some chase antics around that, but soon everyone is on the same page and on the (live-action) surface in search of the real culprit. They get ahold of a page of Burger Beard\u2019s magic book (one of those magical movie books where you can make anything happen just by writing in it) and turn themselves into superheroes for the inevitable showdown with the pirate. Supposedly they\u2019re doing this for practical reasons, but you know the real reason is so they can sell toys of the characters in their superhero costumes.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s humor is pretty much the same as the show\u2019s. Wordplay ranges from the painfully horrible (beware the misuse of \u201canemone\u201d) to the merely slightly horrible (okay, I laughed at a few, like Plankton\u2019s evil mispronunciation of the work \u201cteamwork\u201d). Most of the humor just revolves around the characters being stupid and clumsy, which for grownups will wear out its welcome quickly. This is a movie I like to refer to as \u201cjunk food\u201d for kids. It isn\u2019t clever or enriching, just a lot of dumb gags fired at a rapid pace to make you forget that most of them aren\u2019t funny by themselves. But at least with so many, a few of them are bound to work. Of course, this means that even more are going to make you want to curl up into a ball and whimper. That\u2019s the appropriate reaction for a dud gag, right? Please tell me that\u2019s normal.<\/p>\n

Aside from the live-action portion and a trippy visit with a space dolphin (a sequence I\u2019ve actually heard complimented, though I found it pointless), there isn\u2019t much that makes \u201cThe SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water\u201d seem like anything more than an extended episode of the TV show. There isn\u2019t even that much that\u2019s special about the live-action portion, just our CGI heroes bouncing off of oblivious humans. \u00a0Kids can do better right now with \u201cPaddington\u201d and adults can do better with any number of awards-season favorites.<\/p>\n

One and a Half Stars out of Five.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water\u201d is rated PG for mild action and rude humor. Its running time is 93 minutes.<\/p>\n

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I watched a few episodes of the \u201cSpongeBob SquarePants\u201d cartoon to get me in the mood for \u201cThe SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.\u201d I know… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34888"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}