STACK Jul #129

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BOTTOM’S UP!
042 JULY 2015 JB Hi-Fi
visit FEATURE DVD&BD
Nickelodeon’s most absorbing cartoon character returns in
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.
K rabby Patties might be closer to reality
than we thought. The SpongeBob
Movie: Sponge Out of Water heralds
the underwater fry cook’s first true visit to dry
land, for his most super-heroic adventure yet.
Life in Bikini Bottom (if you don’t think too
much about the name) seems blissful enough,
until Spongebob (voiced by Tom Kenny) and
his pals – Patrick Star (Bill Faggerbakke),
Squidward Tentacles (Rodger Bumpass), Sandy
(Carolyn Lawrence), and Mr. Krabs (Clancy
Brown) – embark on a wild 3D escapade when
the top-secret Krabby Patty recipe is stolen.
Consequently, SpongeBob must join forces with
nemesis Plankton for a trip through time and
space, harness internal superpowers and battle
fiendish pirate Burger Beard (Antonio Banderas),
who has his own plans for the Krabby delicacies.
“It's everything you want in a movie,"
promises director Paul Tibbitt. "We've taken
familiar characters and pushed them in
completely new directions – it's a road movie, a
superhero movie, and a post-apocalypse movie,
and it's all in 3D!"
After years of working within the constraints
of a television, the movie allowed the creative
team to explore crazy new possibilities for the
series' classic characters.
"From the beginning, we knew we needed
to do something big," Tibbitt says.
"We're used to having these huge
ideas for stories which we'd
inevitably have to scale back in
some way. But for the film, we
realised we could bring
the studio (Paramount)
a crazy new idea, and
they'd give us the latitude
to make it happen.
Nothing was off the table."
After 15 years of
SpongeBob, the cast and
creative team have had
time to ponder the franchise's legacy. "When
the show first started airing, my
daughter was in kindergarten,"
recalls Clancy Brown. "Now
she's in college. Both of Tom's
kids were born during the
run of the show. You start to
associate parts of your life with
[SpongeBob], because it's
become such a huge part of
our lives."
As far as the
humour goes,
there’s no holds
barred when it
comes to the
in-jokes that
the kids might
miss. "We've always written to make ourselves
laugh," says SpongeBob writer Stephen
Hillenburg. "Thankfully, what makes us laugh is
appropriate for children. It's always great to hear
adults say they can stand to watch our show."
Now, for the first time, fans of the
SpongeBob television series will get to see
their favourite characters rendered in three
dimensions. "The show has always had an
element of animation and live action; animated
characters in Bikini Bottom and a few live action
segments in our world," says Hillenburg. "But
we've never done anything on this level."
Bill Fagerbakke adds, "In the past, our
characters have been stick figures outside
of the water, but this time around, the visual
presentation is completely new. Everything is
different. It's like they're going to Oz.”
It seems as though the occurrences in this
film aren’t all that different from the goings-
on in Oz, either. From time travel to talking
dolphins, and everything in between, The
Spongebob Movie: Sponge O
Water is pretty much exactly
what you’d expect from a
sponge that wears pants
and a squirrel that lives
underwater in a space suit.
Are ya ready, kids?
It's everything you
want in a movie –
it's a road movie, a
superhero movie, and
a post-apocalypse
movie