SpongeBob's Latest: Search for SquarePants Review – A Swashbuckling Helping of Snicker-Inducing Silliness

Could those original fans who laughed through the first SpongeBob escapades have envisioned the series persisting for a 25 years, following absorbing the most lysergic of plotlines? This staying power is partly due to its wide-ranging charm, amusing the funny bones of grown-ups – possibly even those former students – alongside the youngest viewers. Although it can't claim anything quite as unexpected as the legendary David Hasselhoff cameo in the 2004 movie, this latest movie thinks nothing of making Clancy Brown talk like a pirate while dispensing payments to music icons like Barbra Streisand. This proves everything can still in the zany world of Bikini Bottom.

An Established Zany Vibe

Kicking off with a holiday short featuring Paramount's alternative long-running babysitters, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the latest SpongeBob film soon finds a comfortably goofy rhythm. Its script acts as a family-friendly treatise on the pros and cons of growing up. This version of SpongeBob (again voiced by Tom Kenny) now stands 36 clams high, a fact that excites him as it at last qualifies him to experience his dream rollercoaster. (An initial, trippy laugh: our overexcitable hero's imagined loop-the-loops.) Yet, as in the finest contemporary American animation, the true rollercoaster is the twisting narrative.

The Adventure for Swashbuckling Credentials

SpongeBob's quest to secure the fabled swashbuckler certificate that will declare him a “big guy” brings him into a showdown with the spectral Flying Dutchman, brought to life by the suddenly ever-present Mark Hamill. While the Dutchman's ship adds a grander scope, the film's visual style remains a charming mix of digital animation and hand-turned elements, consistently highlighting pleasing, properly cartoonish effects.

Whether its freewheeling humor will resonate when the lights come up is debatable, but it's a solid SpongeBob movie.

Notable moments feature SpongeBob squeezing himself into an air conditioner and coming out inexplicably squarer than ever; a cameo from a pair of chattering joke-shop false teeth; and a penalty sure to delight the six-year-old audience: our hero being subjected to endless dishwashing.

Final Thoughts

In the end, Search for SquarePants is a solid entry to the series – and perhaps the funniest Pirates of the Caribbean movie recently, including a hearty Davy Jones joke and a cheekily innuendo-laden saying for SpongeBob's friend Patrick: “The best guys are big guys.” It's clear: those original students will likely be snickering anew.

Coming to Theaters: The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants debuts on 19 December in the US, 20 December in Ireland, and December 26th in Australia and the UK.