In Tina Fey’s masterpiece 30 Rock, the innocent country boy Kenneth is introduced to cable TV and has just one thing to ask: “Is SpongeBob SquarePants supposed to be terrifying?” His boss, played by Alec Baldwin, whispers: “You’re darn right he is.” This is the new SpongeBob film (a sequel to the first in 2004), and there has been no advance, evolutionary development or creative progress since then. It’s just bizarre and surreal. This last term is one often inaccurately applied, but SpongeBob really does deserve it.
The film tells the story of a bearded pirate, played by Antonio Banderas, who steals a magical book, which tells a story that unfolds on screen: that of Bikini Bottom, an undersea world where SpongeBob, an employee of the popular Krusty Krab fast-food joint, guards the secret recipe for its delicious burgers. A rival called Plankton, owner of the grisly restaurant the Chum Bucket, wants to steal the recipe, a scroll kept in a bottle, but it vanishes in some weird hole in the space-time continuum; a catastrophe seemingly triggered by the pirate’s unauthorised reading of the magic book. Can’t the owners just remember the recipe? Who knows? Almost every line is a zinger, which can be appreciated in a state of total sobriety: it’s a non-stoner stoner film – and very funny.
