Big-screen blowup of the Nickelodeon TV cartoon show, brain-child of writer-director Stephen Hillenburg. After a campy musical prologue with some live-action pirates, we are introduced to the ocean-floor community of Bikini Bottom; to the title character who looks as much like a block of Swiss cheese as like an O-Cel-O sponge (the rectangular pants, something like a step-in flower box, do not identify him either way); to his starfish pal, Patrick; to his boss, Eugene Krabs, owner of the Krusty Krab eatery, home of the Krabby Patty; and to the latter's envious business rival, a specimen of plankton who runs the unsuccessful Chum Bucket and steals the secret recipe of the Krabby Patty, along with the crown of King Neptune (exposing his bald spot and fragile ego), and frames the crab for the crime. It's up to Spongebob, the Krusty Krab's fry-cook who covets the position of manager in the newly opened Krusty Krab 2, to set things right. Is he man enough for the job, or is he just a kid who likes to blow bubbles and eat ice cream? A live-action David Hasselhoff comes to the rescue in a campy climax that balances the campy prologue. All of this is apt to sound viable enough in summary. The actual artwork, on the other hand, is willfully primitive, knowingly naive, or, without the equivocation, just plain lousy, and the voices are almost unanimously annoying. A newcomer to the terrain might be struck by the number of phallic shapes on parade. Phallic heads, phallic snouts, phallic appendages. The phallic eyes of the crab are even covered, on and off, with roll-down condom-like eyelids (if that's the proper crustacean word). Such a newcomer may, even so, have a hard time convincing himself that this constitutes an appeal to the adult. The same may be said of the self-conscious mythicizing: the quest motif, the growth motif, the deliverance motif. Even that, in the aftermath of Star Wars, has become kids' stuff. No doubt there's a creative touch or two, possibly three: the sandwich car, one or two of the sea monsters. The rest is not quite all the way to appalling, but it's nearer that than amusing. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.