Fans will be ready for this spongy sequel.
When the hit Nickelodeon animated series “SpongeBob SquarePants” did a “Snow White” parody called “Snow Yellow,” my reaction was: “You know what “Snow Yellow” really means right?” and “That’s piss in reverse.”
When the lovable sea sponge made another theatrical movie: “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants,” I was kind of dreading it because of how they were reporting old tricks without any recollection of the earlier seasons or movies which I grew up and treasured in my youth. The first film in 2004 had him labeled as a kid, and he wanted to act like an adult. In this 2025 sequel, he wants to be a “Big Guy.” And he finally is, standing at 36 and a half clams and tall enough to ride a roller coaster, which he is now terrified of. And they seem to act like they have never met the ghost pirate: the Flying Dutchman before. But then again, they acted like they’ve never meet DoodleBob before.
But as I watched “The Search for SquarePants,” I found it to be a lot better than I expected. I wouldn’t really recommend it to an adult crowd, but I basically said the same thing about “A Minecraft Movie.” They both work as children’s entertainment, except this one is a little more harmless. I know I said that before, but I didn’t anticipate that “Chicken Jockey” would have kids throwing popcorn in the theater. I probably did anticipate some adult fans reacting to the jokes in this movie, though. And study shows that about 25% of adults without children still watch the show. So, I guess the film knows its target audience.
SpongeBob (voiced once again by Tom Kenny, whom I told was the Mel Blanc of today’s voice actors) and his starfish friend Patrick (voiced by Bill Fagerbakke) find themselves in the underworld, courtesy of the Flying Dutchman (now voiced by Mark Hamill, replacing Brian Doyle Murray in the series). And he needs the sea sponge to break his curse.
His challenges basically play like arcade games, when SpongeBob must use his affable and versatile nature to reach to the villain’s goal, as well as his own of being a “Big Guy.” One of them is strange and a little Tom Greenish as he and Patrick land on sea plants, and think their intestines have popped out and they start fooling around with them and making their skeletons opponents laugh themselves to death.
There are better choices made here than what was displayed in “Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie,” which was a made-for-Netflix film and had Wanda Sykes as a creepy disembodied head creature of some sorts. The CGI animation seems edgier on film, which allows the characters to look and feel interesting, and I can imagine how they would look in the traditional animation they came from, kudos to their late creator Stephen Hillenburg. And I like how SpongeBob wakes up in a “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” style, and how Patrick repeats a Flight of the Conchords lyric (“I’m not crying, it’s just raining on my face”). And there are some nice guest voices from George Lopez as a live-action fish critiquing this film and Regina Hall as the Flying Dutchman’s first mate.
It’s not a movie I would recommend to a group of adults, who don’t watch the series, but rather to those who do and to the kids who need to something other than “Zootopia 2” entertaining them this Christmas break. It’s weird I would give a pass to “SpongeBob” and not to “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” but I guess it’s within the context of the reviews. And I already got a Facebook comment on my “Avatar: Fire and Ash” review saying: “Enjoyed your review. I just can’t do another one.” So, I guess it’s not weird after all.