Crusty Barnacles!
Nov. 19th, 2004 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
semiotic_pirateYay for the Sponge! Long live the Sponge! (anyone ever wonder if he is a displaced kitchen sponge, being square?) We LOVE the Sponge!
Absorbency Plus Frivolity, a Blend the World Needs
By A. O. SCOTT
In the wake of the recent election, there's been some talk of healing, but until today no single figure has emerged with the capacity to repair the deep fissures in the body politic. We are so hung up on blue states and red states that our only hope may lie in the primary color that has been left off the map. We need something - or someone - yellow, and also absorbent and porous enough to soak up the ill will and scrub away the lingering bad feelings.
Now more than ever, the country needs SpongeBob SquarePants, and starting today, in theaters everywhere, he answers the call, with a big-screen rendition of the nautical nonsense that has been delighting Nickelodeon viewers - including a great many grown-ups without the alibi of children - for the past five years.
If SpongeBob's nautical nonsense, the brainchild of Stephen Hillenburg, is generally not something you wish, then you may find the 88 minutes of "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie" unbearable in their aggressive, puerile whimsy. True aficionados, on the other hand, will leave wanting more. This is the only time I can recall hearing my own children, who have lately traded in animated Nickelodeon shows for the more sophisticated tweener live-action fare on the Disney Channel, complain that a movie was too short. They had a point: inserting SpongeBob (Tom Kenny) and Patrick, his loyal, oafish pink starfish pal (Bill Fagerbakke), into a feature-length quest narrative leaves you wanting more because the movie lacks the density of the television episodes, around seven of which would fit comfortably inside it.
It's also true that Mr. Hillenburg's distinctive animating style, whose flat, static backgrounds are appropriately stylized for television - like the Flintstones' Bedrock submerged under hallucinogen-laced water - looks a little tacky and flimsy when blown up to multiplex scale. But this is a quibble.
The loud, silly innocence of Mr. Hillenburg's imaginary world, where double entendres seem to bubble up and dissipate faster than you can catch them, is a welcome antidote to the self-seriousness and brutality that rule so much of the popular culture. A few perfunctory speeches about being yourself are tacked on at the end (who else could SpongeBob possibly be?), but the movie insists upon no important lessons, which is a relief.
Yet the lack of preachiness doesn't mean that "SpongeBob SquarePants," which Mr. Hillenberg wrote with a gaggle of collaborators, is cynical or neutral. There is a bad guy: a tiny, green, one-eyed failed restaurateur named Plankton (Mr. Lawrence), whose rivalry with Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown), owner of the Krusty Krab, where our hero mans the grill, grows into a full-scale scheme for world domination. This involves the theft of King Neptune's crown, which SpongeBob and Patrick, urged on by the king's sensible daughter, Mindy, set off to retrieve. Along the way they encounter various dangers, which they manage to surmount through the power of sheer unembarrassed goofiness.
The movie itself triumphs by similar means; it is a marvel of unleashed childishness, like a birthday party on the edge of spinning out of control. The familiar voices from the television show are bolstered by a smattering of movie and television stars, including Jeffrey Tambor as the King, Alec Baldwin as a tough guy for hire named Dennis, and Scarlett Johansson as Mindy (no wonder Patrick has such a crush on her). I was sorry to see my favorite secondary characters, Squidward, Sandy the Squirrel and Mrs. Puff, pushed to the margins, but my TiVo has enough memory to make up the deficit.
The film's appeal, along with what you might call its moral, lies in the close fit between Mr. Hillenburg's brightly colored, daftly inventive approach to animation and storytelling and the buoyant, grating good cheer of his hero. In the course of his journey, SpongeBob tries on several occasions to prove his manhood, and in each case succeeds in proving the opposite. His unembarrassed embrace of his own immaturity may make some parents uncomfortable even as it explains SpongeBob's appeal to grown-up slackers and misfits; he indulges our juvenile instincts rather than pushing us or our children toward anything resembling responsibility.
This regression comes as something of a relief, because it offers both a flight from the burdens of maturity and an alternative to angry, aggressive forms of immaturity that dominate movies, television and video games. SpongeBob is weak, indecisive and easy to ridicule, but he is also loyal, decent and optimistic (and always neatly dressed) - a walking, singing reproof to the glowering, vengeance-seeking macho types who hog all the attention. If you're tired of their bluster and swagger, SpongeBob is your man.
Absorbency Plus Frivolity, a Blend the World Needs
By A. O. SCOTT
In the wake of the recent election, there's been some talk of healing, but until today no single figure has emerged with the capacity to repair the deep fissures in the body politic. We are so hung up on blue states and red states that our only hope may lie in the primary color that has been left off the map. We need something - or someone - yellow, and also absorbent and porous enough to soak up the ill will and scrub away the lingering bad feelings.
Now more than ever, the country needs SpongeBob SquarePants, and starting today, in theaters everywhere, he answers the call, with a big-screen rendition of the nautical nonsense that has been delighting Nickelodeon viewers - including a great many grown-ups without the alibi of children - for the past five years.
If SpongeBob's nautical nonsense, the brainchild of Stephen Hillenburg, is generally not something you wish, then you may find the 88 minutes of "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie" unbearable in their aggressive, puerile whimsy. True aficionados, on the other hand, will leave wanting more. This is the only time I can recall hearing my own children, who have lately traded in animated Nickelodeon shows for the more sophisticated tweener live-action fare on the Disney Channel, complain that a movie was too short. They had a point: inserting SpongeBob (Tom Kenny) and Patrick, his loyal, oafish pink starfish pal (Bill Fagerbakke), into a feature-length quest narrative leaves you wanting more because the movie lacks the density of the television episodes, around seven of which would fit comfortably inside it.
It's also true that Mr. Hillenburg's distinctive animating style, whose flat, static backgrounds are appropriately stylized for television - like the Flintstones' Bedrock submerged under hallucinogen-laced water - looks a little tacky and flimsy when blown up to multiplex scale. But this is a quibble.
The loud, silly innocence of Mr. Hillenburg's imaginary world, where double entendres seem to bubble up and dissipate faster than you can catch them, is a welcome antidote to the self-seriousness and brutality that rule so much of the popular culture. A few perfunctory speeches about being yourself are tacked on at the end (who else could SpongeBob possibly be?), but the movie insists upon no important lessons, which is a relief.
Yet the lack of preachiness doesn't mean that "SpongeBob SquarePants," which Mr. Hillenberg wrote with a gaggle of collaborators, is cynical or neutral. There is a bad guy: a tiny, green, one-eyed failed restaurateur named Plankton (Mr. Lawrence), whose rivalry with Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown), owner of the Krusty Krab, where our hero mans the grill, grows into a full-scale scheme for world domination. This involves the theft of King Neptune's crown, which SpongeBob and Patrick, urged on by the king's sensible daughter, Mindy, set off to retrieve. Along the way they encounter various dangers, which they manage to surmount through the power of sheer unembarrassed goofiness.
The movie itself triumphs by similar means; it is a marvel of unleashed childishness, like a birthday party on the edge of spinning out of control. The familiar voices from the television show are bolstered by a smattering of movie and television stars, including Jeffrey Tambor as the King, Alec Baldwin as a tough guy for hire named Dennis, and Scarlett Johansson as Mindy (no wonder Patrick has such a crush on her). I was sorry to see my favorite secondary characters, Squidward, Sandy the Squirrel and Mrs. Puff, pushed to the margins, but my TiVo has enough memory to make up the deficit.
The film's appeal, along with what you might call its moral, lies in the close fit between Mr. Hillenburg's brightly colored, daftly inventive approach to animation and storytelling and the buoyant, grating good cheer of his hero. In the course of his journey, SpongeBob tries on several occasions to prove his manhood, and in each case succeeds in proving the opposite. His unembarrassed embrace of his own immaturity may make some parents uncomfortable even as it explains SpongeBob's appeal to grown-up slackers and misfits; he indulges our juvenile instincts rather than pushing us or our children toward anything resembling responsibility.
This regression comes as something of a relief, because it offers both a flight from the burdens of maturity and an alternative to angry, aggressive forms of immaturity that dominate movies, television and video games. SpongeBob is weak, indecisive and easy to ridicule, but he is also loyal, decent and optimistic (and always neatly dressed) - a walking, singing reproof to the glowering, vengeance-seeking macho types who hog all the attention. If you're tired of their bluster and swagger, SpongeBob is your man.
