‘The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants’ review: A Bit Toothless

It’s an exaggeration to say that “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants” is the movie that finally drains the life out of SpongeBob squarepants. But watching this friendly,yet rather toothless adventure,with jokes that don’t land as they used to,you can feel SpongeBob sliding into the zone of a harebrained,yet rote elder statesman of high-energy juvenilia. He’s still a beguiling doofus who, as voiced by Tom Kenny, sounds like Daffy Duck on laughing gas, and there’s still an appealing aura of arrested kitsch to the now shiny and digital “SpongeBob” world. (It was better when it was drawn.) But the original “SpongeBob” series, and several of the previous big-screen adaptations (including “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run”), struck much funnier notes of flippant irresponsibility.

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