Well there's a new Spongebob movie on Netflix, and at the least it's a big improvement on the Sandy movie. Unfortunately that only means it's OK background viewing with the occasional flash of inspiration worth looking up for.
The animation is fairly decent, but the overall look is kind of cheap (although the budget seems to have been raised for the final musical number). I know people get bored of these kind of comments, but I simply don't see any reason why this or the Sandy movie couldn't have stuck with the traditional Spongebob look the show still uses to this day. I can see the argument for using CG for theatrical features even if I don't agree (and Sponge on the Run did look pretty nice), but when this is landing side by side with episodes of the original show? Makes no real sense. There's one pretty cool camera move, but otherwise this doesn't really take much advantage of the 3D format.
You may have heard there are some musical numbers, and the songs are OK, and there's a nice repeating Steve Stevens-style guitar motif. There is also a mixed media element to the film with a cool 2D Psychedelic sequence and a Fleischer-style (kind of) childhood flashback. The later isn't quite as much fun as the recent American Dad pastiche, but still neat. There is a college flashback with some faux-80s music, because colleges are quintessentially 80s I guess. the College look more like a High School to me, but who am I to say what colleges look like under the sea.
I don't really like this new trend of Spongebob suddenly breaking out into accents and personas like he's the Genie or something (it is new right?), but at least here he only breaks out into one persona this time (a German Psychiatrist).
I haven't seen the main series in a while or any episodes of Kamp Koral and only a few episodes of the Patrick show (which were kind of fun), so I can't make any sweeping generalisations, but if these Netflix just-about-good-enough-babysitters are representative of Spongebob's future it's a bit of a shame. I guess we'll see if they're holding back for the theatrical Search for SquarePants movie.
The animation is fairly decent, but the overall look is kind of cheap (although the budget seems to have been raised for the final musical number). I know people get bored of these kind of comments, but I simply don't see any reason why this or the Sandy movie couldn't have stuck with the traditional Spongebob look the show still uses to this day. I can see the argument for using CG for theatrical features even if I don't agree (and Sponge on the Run did look pretty nice), but when this is landing side by side with episodes of the original show? Makes no real sense. There's one pretty cool camera move, but otherwise this doesn't really take much advantage of the 3D format.
You may have heard there are some musical numbers, and the songs are OK, and there's a nice repeating Steve Stevens-style guitar motif. There is also a mixed media element to the film with a cool 2D Psychedelic sequence and a Fleischer-style (kind of) childhood flashback. The later isn't quite as much fun as the recent American Dad pastiche, but still neat. There is a college flashback with some faux-80s music, because colleges are quintessentially 80s I guess. the College look more like a High School to me, but who am I to say what colleges look like under the sea.
I don't really like this new trend of Spongebob suddenly breaking out into accents and personas like he's the Genie or something (it is new right?), but at least here he only breaks out into one persona this time (a German Psychiatrist).
I haven't seen the main series in a while or any episodes of Kamp Koral and only a few episodes of the Patrick show (which were kind of fun), so I can't make any sweeping generalisations, but if these Netflix just-about-good-enough-babysitters are representative of Spongebob's future it's a bit of a shame. I guess we'll see if they're holding back for the theatrical Search for SquarePants movie.
