“Come and play with us… ” Bonkers doesn’t even begin to describe the Magic Roundabout levels of strangeness in this freaky slice of surreal slapstick which ventures from the depths of the ocean to the edges of the universe, with nods to Douglas Adams, Sergio Leone, Pirandello, Mad Max and Stanley Kubrick along the way. Having lost the Krusty Krab’s secret recipe following a raid by rival restaurateur Plankton, SpongeBob must travel back and forth in time and space, communing with the Dolphin Guardians of the Galaxy, exploring the psychotronic candyfloss dreamscapes of his mind, and even offering himself as a Wicker Man-style pagan sacrifice to the gods of the “post apocalypse”. The live-action sequences, in which Antonio Banderas chews the pirate scenery, may not live up to the Looney Tunes madness of the cartoons, but for sheer head-scrambling craziness this is hard to beat.
