‘The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants’ review: A funny, fast-paced pleasure

Movie review

He’s such an excitable boy (apologies here to Warren Zevon). 

That would be SpongeBob SquarePants, the ever-cheerful, deeply yellow, bucktoothed chatterbox kitchen sponge who’s been beguiling animation fans on screens small and big since 1999. 

Back again, he is in “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants,” the sixth cartoon feature chronicling the further adventures of the little guy. 

Emphasis this time is on that “little” bit. Galls him, it does. Prevents him from meeting the height requirement to ride the Big Guy Rollercoaster, the hottest attraction in his Bikini Bottom home world. On the day when, after years of yearning, he finds he’s finally grown just enough to meet the 36-clam height cutoff, it’s “WAHOO!” time and he’s ready to go-go-go. At last, he’s a Big Guy.

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That triggers a whole lot of “WAAH!” and “AAAHHH!” and “AAAIIEEE!” in this picture. And even more maniacal cackling, “CACKLE! HAR!” as SpongeBob and his goofy good buddy Patrick the starfish fall into the ghoulish green clutches of the Flying Dutchman, “the most pants-wettingly scariest ghost to ever roam the high seas.” The grody baddie is voiced with unhinged vigor by Mark Hamill. (The words between the yelps and howls come courtesy of screenwriters Pam Brady and Matt Lieberman.) 

Longtime regulars Tom Kenny (SpongeBob), Bill Fagerbakke (Patrick), Clancy Brown (Mr. Krabs), Rodger Bumpass (Squidward) and Mr. Lawrence (Plankton) are all on hand to provide the characters’ voices. New on the scene in the vocal department is Regina Hall, who voices the Dutchman’s capable, eyepatch-wearing second-in-command, Barb.

Way down below Bikini Bottom they all go in the Dutchman’s rotted three-masted schooner to do battle with all manner of scary beasties in the Underworld.

The pacing is lickety-split. Director Derek Drymon, who helped develop the character of SpongeBob for TV with the late Stephen Hillenburg back in the 1990s, knows this material inside out and knows how to make it appeal to kids and grown-ups as well. 

For the kids, there’s the nonstop action and the below-the-belt rudeness of some of the visual humor. Frightened, a startled SpongeBob has a habit of suddenly releasing what he calls a “lucky brick” from his nethers with a noisy clank. 

For adults, there’s a scene in which his boss Mr. Krabs, owner of the Krusty Krab restaurant, reveals that “the entrance to the Underworld is in the most horrible place imaginable” … Bikini Bottom High School. The entrance is in the gym’s locker room, behind the door marked — what else? — “Davy Jones Locker.” Throw in background music from Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana,” and this thing even attains a touch of highfalutin class.

The scheming Dutchman is trapped in the netherworld by a 500-year-old curse that can only be broken with the help of a true innocent, a kid, someone with “daring, panache, guts, grit, moxie and intestinal fortitude.”  

SpongeBob’s got all that covered big time, especially that last part. A scene where the kid and Patrick giddily flail away at one another with their glistening, ropy intestines challenges the outer limits of the picture’s PG rating. 

Everybody involved seems to be having a blast making this latest “SpongeBob” a funny, fast-paced pleasure.

“The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants” ★★★ (out of four)
Featuring the voices of Tom Kenny, Clancy Brown, Rodger Bumpass, Bill Fagerbakke, Mark Hamill, Regina Hall, George Lopez. Directed by Derek Drymon, from a screenplay by Pam Brady and Matt Lieberman. 96 minutes. Rated PG for rude humor, action and some scary images. Opens Dec. 18 at multiple theaters.

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