The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (2015)

Synopsis: It’s an episode of Spongebob Squarepants that’s 3 times longer and then a live-action part.

Would you be able to sit through it?: There’s a pretty good amount of adult humor in this, plus some oiled-up gals in bikinis near the end. Human ones. Also, I was trying to figure out who was providing the voice of Bubbles the space dolphin and realized it was Dr. Lucian Sanchez (Todd Rivers) from Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace!

Any scary/violent parts?: Bikini Bottom goes post-apocalyptic, and a trip inside Spongebob’s head is frightening.

Anything that will screw up your kid’s head?: Mr. Krabs literally tortures Plankton at one point.

Any lessons to be learned?: Teamwork rules! T.E.A.M. = Totally Excellent Ape Makeover.

Recommended age: 7. Despite being about a talking sponge, the movie plays a bit more to older kids, and a lot of the stuff may go over the heads of younger ones, because they’re shorter.

Rent it, buy it or avoid it?: Rent. You know what you’re getting with Spongebob. No real educational value, and no real life-affirming lesson to be learned, just an endless series of wacky shenanigans. I can handle Spongebob ok, but I can totally understand if you can’t. So if your kid isn’t all that into Spongebob and isn’t begging you to go then you can wait to rent it so you can do something else while they’re watching it. Obviously they won’t get the 3D effects that way, but for a movie that has really trumpeted its 3D, there really aren’t that many cool 3D moments in it. Especially for something that’s for kids, you’d think they’d have stuff floating in front of you a lot more, because kids can’t get enough of that crap in a futile attempt to catch something that isn’t really there like your dad’s love. But other than cannonballs and ice cream cones, there wasn’t much that was all that eye-popping in the third dimension. So overall, the movie was just ok. Not horrible, but just kind of there. From the previews I was expecting most of the movie to be set in the live-action world with the CG characters, but that was really only the last 20 minutes or so, which is odd because the movie’s title is “Sponge Out of Water.” The first 3/4s was the same as any regular Spongebob episode. The live-action scenes were by far the best part of the movie. The characters while obviously cartoony looked pretty good in the environment. But there just wasn’t enough of it to make up for the standard, really weird majority of the picture. Still, I didn’t hate it or anything, and would rather watch this 16 times in a row than watch something like The Amazing Spider-Man 2 once.

Score: 6.5 crusty crabs (out of 10)

My Daughter’s Review: “I liked it when Plankton went inside Spongebob’s brain and he came out covered in cotton candy and said he had cotton candy for brains. I liked Bubbles the dolphin because dolphins are my favorite animal.”