The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water - review

A plot in which the theft of a condiment recipe from a fast-food chain unleashes the apocalypse is not a great social message, but it’s not the worst way to waste 90 minutes of the school holidays. Especially if your young ones prefer their dialogue with a side of silly puns: “Unleash the condiments” — “With relish!”

Tiny evil guy Plankton wants to steal the recipe for Mr Krab’s delicious sauce so that he can perk up business at Chum Bucket, his own substandard fried-food joint. Everybody’s favourite yellow optimist busts Plankton mid-heist, but as Spongebob negotiates the safe return of the recipe, both are shocked when it disappears into thin air between them.

Within minutes, the Krusty Krab is all outta Krabcakes, and the peaceful land of Bikini Bottom quickly unravels into a Mad Max waste­­­land. Worse still, nobody believes Spongebob when he says Plankton is not the culprit, and so begins their quest to retrieve the recipe.

The middle part of the film is the most fun and gives the animators their best material. Plankton and Spongebob invent a time-travelling machine, Plankton journeys through Spongebob’s brain, and they meet a space dolphin called Bubbles, who lives in an invisible pyramid somewhere near Jupiter.

The back end of the film fulfils the “out of water” part of the title, with our odd little pals transformed into bulked-up superheroes on dry land. As with most action flicks these days, it’s a tedious chase sequence that drags on, with Antonio Banderas slumming it as a strangely unattractive pirate.

They’d have been better off spending the time writing a spin-off series for Bubbles the dolphin. Don’t fork out for the 3D version.