The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004)
You might know that I am a fan of the cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants, but then isn’t everyone? I don’t recall watching this on Nickelodeon when I had access to that channel though, it was when there was a repeat run rather late at night on long-gone channel TMF where I just realised that this was all great and adorable, and then I didn’t want to miss an episode, I wanted the comics too and everything.
A pineapple under the sea? What will they think of next. So it was great to know that there was a film version planned of all this, as the popularity was increasing. A lot of people looked forward to this, and hoped that this would be absorbing (what a great pun). SpongeBob and his friend Patrick are about to go on an adventure like never before. King Neptune’s crown has gone missing, who can find this? Well you can probably guess.
Along with this, there was a guest appearance by David Hasselhoff, how exciting. There is also a moment when SpongeBob and Patrick start to dry out, and I’m not sure why, but I thought that this all looked rather horrible. This is a film that is rated U, but I found all this more scary than the content of most 15s that I’ve seen, they never warn you about that, do they.
The first film went on to gross $191m worldwide though, just imagine how many Krabby patties you would be able to buy with that. And there was plenty of tie-in merchandise released too, including a computer game and figurines and everything. It was pleasing that this was a success, and most of the reviews were positive, although some felt that the original TV version was never really the same after this.
DVD extras include how the film was produced (I hope that they had plenty of yellow ink), along with trails and the like. About a decade on from this, there was finally a sequel, Sponge Out Of Water, where as usual, our heroes have to save the world, and will have a go with their usual bizarre charm, this time featuring computer-generated characters. There was recently a third film, and a fourth is currently in development.
ADAM'S NOSTALGIC MEMORIES 