Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

I saw this bad boy in the theaters! Yeah, I’m opening with that. You better believe it. I even took my girlfriend with me. She broke up with me a while after that. Was The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie the beginning of our downward spiral? I’d like to think so and that’s just one of the many reasons I love this movie!

Where do I begin!?! Probably with SpongeBob himself. Someone somewhere wrote that kids who watch SpongeBob are more likely to be less intelligent than those who don’t. Now THERE’S an exhaustive study that needed full funding. Bang up job scientists. Was the cure for cancer too hard and you needed an easy target to attack?

SpongeBob is a call back to funny cartoons. For a while it seemed like everything was action, action, action. Don’t get me wrong. Many of those animated action shows were great but the cute and semi-funny stuff seemed reserved for little kids. Even simpsons played out more like a day-time dramedy most of the time. Where was the Ren and Stimpy? Where was the Ed, Edd, n’ Eddy? Where was Dexters Laboratory? Where was the freaking Looney Tunes!?! I’m sure there were some funny cartoons out there somewhere and I’m probably being hyperbolic. But SpongeBob brought funny cartoons back into the mainstream so much so that pearl clutchers  had to worry about the effects it was having on society. That’s always a good sign. I didn’t party or do drugs as a teen. I watched Spongebob. I’d like to think I’m better off for it but only time will tell.

My kid’s first experience with horses was Mystery the seahorse on SpongeBob. When we finally drove by a field of horses (which strangely didn’t happen for a really long time when she was little) she asked if those were “land horses”. In retrospect, a lot of her early education was centered around the SpongeBob episodes I was watching for my own amusement. She used to call hamburgers “crabby patties”. There could be worse childhoods to recover from, I suppose. She hasn’t tried to start a campfire underwater yet so I know she’s not THAT dumb despite what the naysayers say.

They (gnomes) have cranked out a few more movies since this one, which surprises me. Usually a series has a one-off in theaters either at the start or the finale of their show then you never see another one before the show peters out. Think of the original Transformers animated movie or the Alvin and the Chipmunks Movie. Of course these have since had revivals. But since 2004 there have been four SpongeBob movies and there’s another set for 2025. The last one was 2024. It’s a SpongeBob movie every year now? This might be getting out of hand. Just the way I like it!

I probably should have saved these Spongebob musings for when I binge the seasons but it is what it is. This film was thoroughly entertaining from start to finish and such a great experience in the theater. 

Something must be said of David Hasselhoff’s performance. Performance? Involvement? Basically he was a set piece. The climax took place on Hasselhoff’s ass. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write while reviewing a kids movie… or ever really. Yes, a live action David Hasselhoff is in this animated movie as himself but with amazing muscle control and an inexplicable Aquaman-like ability to propel through water. This stuff just gets better and better.

Keep an eye out for Mageina Tovah in a bit part as the theater usher. You’ll remember her as 2004’s Peter Parker’s Russian Landlord’s daughter, Ursula (a missed opportunity in my opinion. Way sweeter than MJ and even made him chocolate cake! URSULA BAKED HIM A CHOCOLATE CAKE and Peter is like “hmmm I’ll take the cake but you can go back to your filthy tenement and eat your pirozhki by yourself.” Mary Jane was to Peter what Jenny was to Forrest Gump! But I digress.)

If SpongeBob isn’t your thing, I get it. Shake the dust off your feet and go drink a glass of water or whatever people who hate fun do for fun. I won’t hold it against you. It’s not your fault the only thing on your TV when you were a child was the stock exchange. Nah, I’m just joshing ya. Cartoon preferences are highly personal and people tend to love what they grew up with. I didn’t exactly grow up with SpongeBob but he managed to tickle a certain kind of person and if you’re one of them, great, and if not, you’re probably a physicist or a doctor or something. So kudos!