(click pic for four, count 'em four, trailers)
The Bob is coming NEXT WEEK. Yes, the SpongeBob Squarepants Movie opens November 19 and the spigots of publicity are fully open. Even reclusive marine biologist-turned-animator Stephen Hillenburg is talking, at least to the NY Times.
The cool, indie-rocking movie soundtrack is already out, the sweepstakes is on (grand prize: a $50,000 caravan to the Cayman Islands), and the product tie-ins are many and various.
According to the Times, the story is a bit more linear than a typical SpongeBob cartoon:
- Something nefarious is afloat in the depths of Bikini Bottom: King Neptune's crown has been stolen, and the prime suspect is Mr. Krabs, proprietor of Mr. Krabs Krabby Patties. Despite evidence to the contrary — not to mention having been turned down for a long-awaited promotion at the restaurant — SpongeBob (voice of Tom Kenny) refuses to believe that his boss is responsible and teams up with his best friend, Patrick (voice of Bill Fagerbakke), on a mission to Shell City, where he hopes he can exonerate Mr. Krabs and return the crown to its rightful owner in the process. Of course, this is no easy task; once outside the relative safety of Bikini Bottom, SpongeBob is faced with the overwhelming dangers of the sea, not the least of which being Plankton and a scheming bottom-dweller hell-bent on oceanic domination. Among those who lent their vocal chords to the film include Scarlett Johansson, Jeffrey Tambor, and Alec Baldwin
David Edelstein ponders the ramifications and speaks with Hillenburg:
- ELEVEN minutes: such a piquant unit of time. Shortish, but plenty long enough for SpongeBob SquarePants to bound out of his undersea bed; feed his pet snail, Gary; leave his pineapple house in Bikini Bottom; bid a cheery good morning to his imbecile buddy, Patrick the starfish, emerging from under his rock; and make happy tracks to the Krusty Krab, a fast-food restaurant where SpongeBob loves loves loves serving trademark Krabby Patties, even if the avaricious owner crab and killjoy squid co-worker find his happy-go-lucky enthusiasm for minimum-wage drudgery bizarre and annoying.
....Those 11-minute episodes of Hawaiian-slacker whimsy, set against flower-cloud backdrops inspired by Polynesian fabrics and punctuated by ukulele music and SpongeBob's dolphin-on-a-sugar-high chortle, have made Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob SquarePants" a phenomenon not only with little kids, but also with big kids, college students, stoners, gays - pretty much everyone who walks on land or shells out, so to speak, for the tie-in merchandise.
Seventy-five minutes: That's the unit Mr. Hillenburg and his fellow SpongeBobians have been wrestling with for the last two years making "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie"
Article comments
1 - Nick FANatic
I saw the film today and thought some of the material was slightly inappropriate for younger audiences. For instance, the scene where Patrick is flying through the air naked with a flag on a stick stuck between his anatomically-correct buttocks was not funny, but tasteless and offensive (one of several Patrick nuddie scenes). Later, Patrick dons a pair of black, fish net stockings and struts around in a pair of stiletto boots in a Rocky Horror Picture Show cross-gender moment to the hi-pitched, hard rock sounds of Spongebob playing electric guitar. In case the imagery was missed by the audience the first time, Patrick later appears in another scene wearing the same fishnet stockings and black boots. I wasn't slightly amused either with the buff-bod David Hasselhoff cameos or when Spongebob did the "your fly is open" joke with Squidward at the end of the movie.
Clearly, this material was not for the elementary school crowd. I'm still scratching my head trying to understand what value these slightly-racy jokes added to a rated G movie.