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Could those early viewers who laughed through the initial SpongeBob escapades have envisioned the franchise persisting for a quarter-century, following experiencing the most lysergic of plotlines? This staying power is in part due to its wide-ranging charm, tickling the funny bones of adults – perhaps even those now grown students – alongside the youngest viewers. While it may not feature anything as surprising as a certain legendary David Hasselhoff appearance in the 2004 movie, this latest movie thinks nothing of making a veteran voice actor speak as a pirate while dispensing royalty cheques to music icons like Barbra Streisand. It seems anything can still in the whimsical world of Bikini Bottom.

An Established Zany Vibe

Kicking off with a holiday short featuring Paramount's other long-running babysitters, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the latest SpongeBob movie quickly finds a recognizably goofy groove. Its storyline serves as a PG-rated treatise on the advantages and disadvantages of maturity. This version of SpongeBob (again brought to life by Tom Kenny) now stands 36 clams high, a fact that thrills him as it finally qualifies him to ride his fantasy coaster. (An initial, trippy laugh: our overexcitable hero's imagined loop-the-loops.) Yet, like the finest modern American animation, the true rollercoaster is the twisting narrative.

The Adventure for Swashbuckling Proof

SpongeBob's quest to obtain the fabled swashbuckler certificate that will declare him a “big guy” leads him into conflict with the spectral Flying Dutchman, voiced by the suddenly ubiquitous Mark Hamill. While the Dutchman's ghost ship introduces a larger scale, the film's aesthetic remains a delightful bricolage of digimation and hand-crafted elements, forever highlighting pleasing, authentically cartoonish effects.

If its freewheeling silliness will linger after the credits is debatable, but it's a solid SpongeBob movie.

Notable scenes include SpongeBob wedging himself into an air conditioner and emerging somehow squarer than before; a cameo from a pair of chattering joke-shop false teeth; and a penalty guaranteed to delight the younger audience: our hero being forced into endless dishwashing.

Final Thoughts

In the end, Search for SquarePants stands as a solid entry to the series – and perhaps the funniest Pirates of the Caribbean movie recently, including a hearty Davy Jones joke and a cheekily innuendo-laden catchphrase for SpongeBob's pal Patrick: “The best guys are big guys.” It's certain: those early students will likely be chuckling all over again.

Release Dates: The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants arrives on 19 December in the US, December 20th in Ireland, and December 26th in Australia and the UK.