The sad decline of SpongeBob movies is guaranteed to sink lower into the abyss in the future but I think it truly hit rock bottom with the dreadful Sandy Cheeks movie from last year: a farcical corporatized uncomfortable fright fest that forsakes everything even remotely appealing about SpongeBob in exchange for transforming him into an ADHD sedation program.
“Plankton: The Movie” is perhaps a pit-stop towards the next inevitable downer. It’s far from a palatable experience but it’s one I’ll begrudgingly take.
Credit must be given to Dave Needham; unlike Liza Johnson’s stock brandflake vision due to what I swear feels like constant sabotage, Dave actually has some wiggle room to work with. He actively exploits and capitalizes on the general anything-goes vibe of SpongeBob, honing in on the shows signature charm and jolly manic absurdity from the original seasons. It barely feels like classic SpongeBob, elevating it mere steps above a pale imitation.
Thank god the animation and CG effects have improved from last time; we’re probably not gonna get the quality of the first film again but this is a nice middle ground. Still looks cheapy the cheapskate in areas, but this no longer looks plastic or dead-eyed and there’s fluidity in its stark, somber motions. Barely preventing the chaos on screen from being overstimulating but also giving it a specific purpose, the countercultural texture odes to flat-’n’-cheesy 2D, black-and-white, anime split-screens or psychedelic trippy fever dreams and back highlight an attempt at variety and dedication that keeps the images somewhat vibrant.
Yet the production design alongside it does the bare minimum of expanding the boundaries of what we know about Bikini Bottom. Its scope and scale might be dialed back a bit as opposed to the real world settings these movies take us to but the difference is here, it doesn’t feel so microscopic. Neither are the rest of the technical aspects regardless of quality: pacing and tone are both impulsively rapid and surefooted in composure (at least in context to the show), costumes again rarely have any impact on the proceedings, you cannot convince me some of the jokes and visual gags weren’t pretty humorous (the others didn’t quite hit) and yet again, cinematography and editing is nothing short of functional in how they competently compliment each other.
And did I mention this was also a musical? Crafting a musical around Plankton’s troubled endeavors and marriage requires a level of creative derangement that is objectively admirable and to be frank, I wasn’t that blown away by any of them; they’re uniformly basic. But still, they manage to be a lot stickier than Emilia Perez (low a bar as that is). Musical score itself is as bareboned as Moniker’s from the previous SpongeBob flick; nothing aside from the classic Spongbob themes stand out yet again.
Bares no repetition: the cast remain as solid as we’re used to hearing from them despite the obvious strain in their voices. And while they’re light on characters that aren’t the main three, they at least find some proper use for them……well, except Squidward.
So on paper, I didn’t find many discrepancies between this and, say, Moana 2: both films have been obviously tweaked and repurposed with a familiar anatomy disguised just enough to hide its repurposed episodic-esque structure and you don’t get any surprises for how it ends. That being said, Plankton’s plot is allowed to get away with it to some degree off one simple notion: the damn thing actually flows much better here. Between Plankton’s more traditional arc of self-reflection and Karen’s descent into full-on villainy, it’s a really simple premise of taking two disgruntled people antagonistic in nature and thrusting them into a spotlight where they have to do a, well, surface-level dive into the ethos of what makes them tick outside their obsessions and limitations; given the voice of Plankton himself helped write this, it’s no wonder the narrative has some fleeting moments of fervor.
Even as a fan of the show or not, you can tell certain characters appearances’ echo the central themes by contrasting with the inner torment of Plankton and Karen and its all pulled off as competently as one tasked with making something like this could accomplish. Occasionally soulful as it is equally frustrating, the antics have the loosest effect of focus to them and project confidence in selling you this.
Still, none of this makes the story foolproof. Stakes aren’t really taken that seriously, momentum careens to a halt so often that the pacing hardly recovers each time and despite it being the whole point behind this unusual dynamic, it comes across very milquetoast and basic at the end of the day.
I mean, even putting to one side how toxic Plankton and Karen’s relationship is in the show and that this isn’t even the first time he took Karen for granted/treated her like shit, this is still yet another retread of many episodes of the show despite Karen’s understandable motive of constantly being second to his vengeance on Krabs. The film barely tries to pretend its interested in the thematic analysis or in-depth character study of the main duo and the structure meant to support that is comprised mostly of flashbacks: even more instances of the continuity slotting in fine or just falling apart like leprosy. It actively contradicts several aspects of the show, especially how it downplays the life-long rivalry between Mr. Krabs and Plankton.
C’mon, in some way, I probably should’ve known this would blow the Sandy Cheeks movie out of the water but the bitter taste it left is still fresh. Not too inclined on giving this a pass for being watchable but….what more can you do?
