Atlantis SquarePantis (SpongeBob SquarePants)
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| ♥ | This article is dedicated to David Bowie (1947-2016), who voiced Lord Royal Highness. |
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 The first ever TV movie for SpongeBob, and it's a... surprisingly average way to do it. Doesn't make it good though.
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Atlantis SquarePantis is a SpongeBob SquarePants episode from season five. It is the first SpongeBob made-for-TV film. The film received mixed reception from fans and critics alike.
Plot
SpongeBob and his friends journey to Atlantis.
Sunken Qualities
Note: Don't say anything about David Bowie not singing in this episode because apparently, he suffered a heart attack and retired from singing before this episode aired.
- The main problem is how lazy the writing is, as the film is padded just about throughout. Not much else is happening besides the characters moving from one place to another while the writers concurrently come up with music to place in favor.
- It feels like a big rating trap due to the false advertisements and trailers, as they make it seem like this was going to be a SpongeBob TV movie by only showing the climax of the movie and didn't show any of the songs that were used in the actual release. The plot makes it feel more like a musical than an actual TV movie.
- One of the episode's main arcs, that being the oldest living bubble residing in Atlantis, is perhaps the laziest and nonsensical part of the whole episode, as it shows how writers be more creative than this.
- There is one major plot hole where during the second musical number the gang sang to power the bus during the ride to Atlantis, Plankton is abruptly revealed to be stowing away into the bus to stalk the gang on their way to Atlantis just to get his hands on the available weapons invented. The aspect anybody would easily question would simply be as how on earth did he manage to enter the bus in the first place, especially since he magically appeared after the two halves of the Atlantian Amulet are connected.
- Speaking of arcs, the main characters themselves feel very generic and one-dimensional. We know that SpongeBob & Patrick love bubbles, Squidward loves art, Mr. Krabs loves money, Sandy loves science, and Plankton loves weapons, but this episode and their respective songs seem to act like these are the only defining traits to their personas.
- What's not helping is that this TV movie started Sandy's flanderization as she started to become more interested in science rather than the other stuff she also likes such as karate, making her bland and one-dimensional, though still likable.
- Whenever any of the characters are singing, there are many different art styles and animation movements that are only here to make up for the lack of creativity put into the writing.
- The Lord Royal Highness (or LRH for short) himself is also a bland and generic character, and his design feels very cartoonish and out-of-place, looking more like a rejected Blue Meanie from Yellow Submarine than a character for SpongeBob SquarePants.
- LRH is also unlikeable at the climax of the episode because he summons his guards to attack the gang just because Patrick pops the oldest bubble, which is nothing to get so upset about to begin with, although as part of the plot the bubble was treated as an important treasure to all of Atlantis.
- His name sounds so cheesy, obvious to the audience, lazy, and unoriginal because you can tell he is a royal highness to the civilians at Atlantis. They couldn't have named him as Royal Bowie as an in-joke/reference to the legendary singer himself, but because of the lacking in originality on what to name that character, this was the best the team could come up with.
- An overabundance of musical numbers. Case in point, there are a total of seven (eight if counting Patchy's song) musical numbers, making this TV movie more like a musical.
- There can also be times when there can be a musical number after that musical number, such example is Plankton's song, which happens five seconds after Sandy's song.
- The songs themselves aren't even good songs, seeing as they've all got forgettable melodies with horrendous lyrics and mostly terrible singing.
- The fact that some of the machinery in Atlantis, most notably the tanks that Plankton was trying to use, can shoot out ice cream is also pretty nonsensical and unintelligent.
- The plot feels like it is trying to recycle that of the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (even though the aforementioned film came out 37 years prior) due to its many similarities, except that film was executed way better than this one.
- The Patchy the Pirate segments, while not terrible, just serve as filler.
- They can also come with VERY bad timing; one very impotent example is before the climax of Plankton with a tank. We get commercials, which seems fine at first, but instead of going to the SpongeBob segment, we get a Patchy segment where he also gets his musical number. Because the segments are just filler, combined with the fact that the commercials are over 11 minutes long, that means it's literally 22 minutes of filler before the climax.
- The final battle is extremely anticlimactic, Plankton comes in with a giant monstrous tank, and strangely, it shoots ice cream.
- Adding into that, while it would seem very anticlimactic, that wouldn't matter much since many of the fans would have already seen it, because one of the very first commercials of this film shows the final battle.
- What's even weirder is that the film spoiled the final battle in the commercials, and never do they say anything that it's a musical.
- Question: Who spoils the climax of a damn movie and yet never says anything about it being a musical?
- An inaccuracy to what has been present in the TV show is that the Atlantis presented in this episode is portrayed as an alien colony inhabited by alien-like creatures who make intellectual and incredibly artifacts and features, yet the Atlantis presented in episodes featuring King Neptune showed that Atlantis was basically a separate kingdom where King Neptune resides, being treated as if it was the series' equivalent to Heaven (especially with those moments in the show where Neptune's name is used in place of God's during exclamatory phrases, fitting into the theory).
- While it's nice to see Aaron Springer return in the number code order, unfortunately, he have a poor return on this episode.
Qualities That Are Back In Encino
- While the aforementioned many different art styles and animation movements were pointless and only there to make up for the laziness put into the writing, they nevertheless look cool and offer a wide amount of variety, especially for Sandy's song.
- Speaking of which, the animation is still pretty good and very smooth.
- Robertryan Cory finally take a cake on the Sandy's song.
- The background design of Atlantis does look pretty cool.
- The voice acting is still on point when the characters are not singing.
- David Bowie's performance as LRH is also pretty good.
- While the first musical number was overall bad like the rest of the musical numbers, the last line of it where SpongeBob says “...that will last all day” is heartwarming and decently sung.
- A few occasional funny moments, such as the intro where Patchy yells at a motorist behind him, yelling, "Do you mind?! I'm trying to talk to my parrot!", with the motorist making a very disturbed look on his face.
- It had an interesting premise that was unfortunately wasted.
- The climax would have been better if most of the special were not padded with songs, character arcs, and the Patchy the Pirate segments.
- The songs, while annoying (except for "Back in Encino" from one of the Patchy the Pirate segments), are admittedly catchy.
- Speaking of "Back in Encino," it is the only good song in this episode, even though it is filler before the climax.
- "Goodbye, Atlantis" and "The Bubble Song" are heartwarming songs to some people.
- The line "I'm Patrick! Patrick, Patrick, Patrick! And I like... um... uh, I don't know what I like." can be funny.
- Patchy, while filler, can still be tolerable.
- The video-game adaptation is an improvement.
- Despite having a poor return, It's nice to see that Aaron Springer finally returned in the number code order, as his next episode "The Krusty Sponge" (in number code) is a huge improvement.
Trivia
- According to Dani Michaeli's Twitter, this episode was originally going to be an 11-minute-long SpongeBob and Patrick episode, but Nickelodeon requested turning it into a TV movie.
- Casey Alexander, one of the show's writers, stated this was his least favorite SpongeBob episode to work on, implying that even he hated this episode.
- This is the first episode that Virginia Hawes worked on.
Videos
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