As we walked to the press screening of the new SpongeBob SquarePants movie, subtly titled The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants, my seven-year-old daughter declared, “We should go see Zootopia 2 again instead.” I said no, and suffered from my poor decision for the next 90 minutes or four hours, I can’t tell which.
Did my seven-year-old SassPants like this new SpongeBob movie, which she was looking forward to despite having only seen a limited number of episodes over the year while in hotel rooms. She gave it a “9 out of 3,” which I think she meant a non-ectatic 3 out of 9. When I told her afterwards that she was right, that we should have gone to see the excellent Zootopia 2 for a second time, she retorted, “Yeah, I know.”
Having only seen some amusing clips of SpongeBob episodes over the years, I have no idea what age group this franchise is aimed at. My kid appreciated the many butt jokes, because I of course taught her to enjoy highbrow humor like that. As far as I can tell butt jokes are the only thing that makes SpongeBob SquarePants even remotely entertaining, and those were the only jokes that the many kids in the audience seemed to laugh at.
There are inspired in-jokes targeting parents, such as when we learn that the portal to the insidious underworld is inside a high school locker belonging to someone named Davy Jones. And there were a handful of other silly things that were also funny.
But there are a lot of silly things in this new SpongeBob movie that are not also funny. I acknowledge I am not in the target demographic, which I have to imagine is five-year-olds, maybe, but what I do know now is that SpongeBob primarily involves throwing lame sea anemones at the wall to see what sticks. I’d be more forgiving if my kid had also liked the movie, but once she finally plowed through her Regal Kid Pack and candy we snuck into the theater, she looked ready to high-tail it out of there, too.
It’s hard to review a kid’s movie not even remotely made for me, but all I know is that on the spectrum of kids movies, The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants is at best a tedious plunge for parents, if not downright soul sucking. Best to let this one swim with the fishes.
Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.