A Day Like This

I watched the SpongeBob SquarePants movie Truth or Square yesterday and it did not disappoint! The writers came up with the very cute and clever idea of having the movie consist mostly of flashbacks--but instead of lazily using clips from old episodes, like most TV movies do, these flashbacks all consisted of entirely new material, with the characters "remembering" things we'd never seen or even heard of on the show before (like SpongeBob and Sandy's wedding). It was a fresh and inventive approach.

The celebrity guests appeared within the framing device of Patchy the Pirate trying to entice them to appear on his own SpongeBob tribute show. The crappy expense-was-spared quality of the Patchy segments always make me laugh, and this was no exception. I love the concept of Patchy, the one-eyed, peg-legged, hook-handed pirate who inexplicably lives in a suburban house in Encino with his parrot, Polly, a marionette puppet with clunky movements and extremely visible strings. Patchy is an obsessive SpongeBob fan who has plastered his home with SpongeBob merchandise. Existing in his own weird reality, halfway between live-action and cartoonland (similar to the Pee-Wee Herman universe), he cannot grasp that SpongeBob is "not real." As most viewers know, Patchy is played by the actor who also does the voice of SpongeBob, Tom Kenny, adding an extra layer of silliness and irony to Patchy's desperate fan worship.

There were a few musical numbers throughout the movie, and those were fun too. Pink performed one, and hers was cute, but I think the song I've posted here ("A Day Like This") was my favorite. It's very sing-along-able.

Two (yellow) thumbs up!