
Now, a decade later, comes The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, which looks as if it cost less. Missing were those free-associational spasms of craziness that make SpongeBob at its best so irrationally entertaining. That story structure was like an anchor weighing it down.

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie had great bits and a terrific soundtrack, but it was a tad … stately. But how would a full-length movie play? Hillenburg was convinced that the same level of intensity over 80-plus minutes would wear the audience out - that a feature needed a more conventional narrative arc and more even pacing. On TV, the SpongeBob cartoons were 11 minutes, the perfect length of time to be bombarded by free-form, surreal gags, inevitably interspersed by the high-pitched chortle of their happy-go-lucky sea-sponge hero. and talk to Stephen Hillenburg and his colleagues about turning their Nickelodeon smash SpongeBob SquarePants into a feature film. In 2004, I got a dream newspaper assignment from the New York Times: to fly to L.A.

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.
