A still from ‘The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants’.
| Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures/YouTube
The seven-minute short, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Chrome Alone 2 – Lost in New Jersey, shown before the main film, sets the tone for The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants. With sly digs at AI (it is all about giving the right cues!) and an evil robot creating rip-offs of the TMNT, the short touches on our growing concern about AI taking over our lives even as we cede greater control to large language models and the like.
The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants (English)
Director: Derek Drymon
Voice cast: Tom Kenny, Clancy Brown, Rodger Bumpass, Bill Fagerbakke, Carolyn Lawrence, Mr. Lawrence, George Lopez, Isis “Ice Spice” Gaston, Arturo Castro, Sherry Cola, Regina Hall, Mark Hamill
Runtime: 96 minutes
Storyline: SpongeBob wants to prove he is a Big Guy and so goes on an adventure with The Flying Dutchman
After that heavy-duty reality check, it was time to soak in the happy, yellow absurdity of the SpongeBob life. SpongeBob (Tom Kenny) wakes up one morning to realise he has grown to the requisite 36-clam height required for the “big guy” rollercoaster ride. However, as he reaches the ride with his friend, Patrick (Bill Fagerbakke), he gets scared and leaves.
SpongeBob’s boss, Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown), tells him of his swashbuckling adventures, and SpongeBob decides to earn a swashbuckling degree, which requires guts, gumption, and “intestinal fortitude.”
SpongeBob mistakenly summons the ghost pirate, The Flying Dutchman (Mark Hamill), who is cursed to roam the underworld until freed by a pure soul.
The villainous pirate believes he has found the pure soul to set him free in SpongeBob. He puts SpongeBob through a series of challenges, explaining that completing them would make him a certified swashbuckler.
And so, SpongeBob blithely clears the challenges (defeating the skeletons with laughter), all the while imagining what Mr. Krabs would do, only to learn the greatest lesson of all at the end.
The action is busy, the colours psychedelic and the jokes sweet — of course there would be one on underworld, underwhere and underwear! Apart from the show’s regular voice cast of Kenny, Brown, Fagerbakke, Rodger Bumpass as Squidward Tentacles, Carolyn Lawrence as Sandy Cheeks, and Mr. Lawrence as Plankton, Regina Hall plays the Dutchman’s crusty sidekick.
ALSO READ: Stephen Hillenburg, ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ animated series creator, dies at 57
There is also a meta moment with George Lopez playing JK Fishlips, an executive at Paramount who says the film does not seem to work!
There is a breezy charm to this fourth theatrical film based on Nickelodeon’s animated television series, SpongeBob SquarePants, making it the perfect gentle tonic to kick-start the New Year.
The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants is currently running in theatres
Published – January 01, 2026 08:15 pm IST
