DIRECTOR: Paul Tibbitt (also Story)
WRITERS: Glen Berger, Jonathan Aibel, Stephen Hillenburg (Story)
On paper, the plot sounds like many a draft after the finished screenplay for the 2004 feature length spinoff of the now nearly sixteen-year-old Nickelodeon cartoon. In the former picture, Mr. Krabs was framed for the theft of King Neptune's crown and SpongeBob and starfish Patrick set off on a quest to retrieve it while arch villain and rival fast-food restaurateur Plankton took over Bikini Bottom via mind control and had an idol made in his image. In this new film, Plankton is accused of stealing Krabs' secret formula for the popular Krabby Patty burger and while civilisation undergoes an apocalyptic makeover, SpongeBob sets off to proves Plankton's innocence and takes him along with him. What really happened was that the formula mysteriously vanished, stolen by live-action character, pirate Burger Beard (Antonio Banderas), who is in possession of a book that helps him write out the film's narrative and thus control the diegesis. He retrieves this book in the film's opening sequence in a kind-of Indiana Jones pastiche which sees him confront a Harryhausen-esque skeleton that out-creeps the undead crew in Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl (2003).
The laughs come as soon as the BBFC card preceding the film warns the audience that the U-rated feature contains "toilet humour" (cue a scared seagull farting and then crapping itself). Reining in the Redbull-infused kinetics of the previous feature (here all channelled into a surrealist sequence in which Plankton physically climbs into SpongeBob's psyche which draws a comparisons with Magic Roundabout spin-off Dougal And The Bluecat) , this is something of a refreshing change from the usual slew of CG animations albeit enhanced in 3D, which gives the "hand-drawn" sequences a ViewMaster effect, if only to make up for the lack of the novelty CGI employed when the principal characters end up on human shores in the film's climax. Here, they use magic to make themselves into Avengers-style superheroes for a team-up against Burger Beard in a beach town.
Any accompanying adults who might at times find their patience tested by the 92 minute running time will find just about enough gags (verbal and visual) to keep them as entertained as the principal audience (perhaps even more so) in the latest family film that really can be not just for the very young, joining the likes of The Lego Movie, Muppets Most Wanted (2014) and Wreck-It-Ralph (2012) to some extent. As with Lego and (at least a couple of times) Wreck-It, the humour is nearly at Aardman level (pun ahoy!) and makes reference to both Stanley Kubrick and Douglas Adams.
Along with the customary (but otherwise televisual) "hand-drawn" segments and CG "live-action" takes on the SpongeBob cast, the film also features very good photo-realistic digital animal work, namely with Beard's "crew" of card-playing seagulls as well as Sandy Cheeks' (a talking squirrel) "live-action" form, who gets to spit nuts like a machine gun.
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