87th Academy Awards: Predictions

It’s that time of year again; time for the Academy Awards, the biggest film award show of the year. And of course that also means that it’s time for me to list my choices predicting who will be winning awards this Sunday. This year’s show is being hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, which is a pretty good choice if you ask me. However, this year’s list of nominations have attracted quite a lot of controversy, primarily the fact that all of the 20 nominees for Best Actor/Actress (Leading and supporting) are white, which is actually the third time this has happened since 1995. But… because I’m not one to talk about race-related controversy on this site I won’t be saying anything further about it, nor will I be focusing that much on ‘potential’ snubs this year either. I’ve come to the point where I realize that criticizing award snubs is a very clichéd thing to do. Because film is so subjective, awards shows like this are fundamentally flawed because they obviously aren’t going to please everyone given the fact that only about 5 or so films/performances get nominated for the major awards every year. Some may call the Oscars ‘bulls***’ but in reality they’re usually the ones who stir up all of the controversy surrounding the Oscars in the first place.

From this point on, I’m just going to accept the annual Oscar nominations for what they are and not complain that much about what didn’t get nominated. So because of this, unlike the ‘Oscar Predictions’ post I did last year, I’m not going to list any snubs for each of the award categories though I will probably mention some here and there while discussing my picks, the only thing being that I won’t make that big a deal about them. Also, I won’t be looking at every single one of the Oscar categories for one of two reasons; A.) Because I haven’t seen any or all of the films in that category (e.g. Foreign Films, Short Films) or B.) I’m really not that familiar with that particular aspect of filmmaking (e.g. sound mixing). Finally, and most importantly, please bear in mind that this is all just my opinion. Obviously I’m not going to predict every single one of these winners correctly (I doubt anyone can) and some of you will no doubt disagree with my picks because you’re always going to get that with film. All I ask is that you please be respectful not only to what I have to say but everyone else’s opinions as well. In other words, don’t be a jackass and trash someone else for liking something that you didn’t. So without further ado, here are my picks for the 87^th Annual Academy Awards.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

*CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER

*DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

*GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

*INTERSTELLAR

*X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST

My Pick: Interstellar

Quite frankly, I’m fine with any of these five films winning this award as they all had some really nice special effects. While last year’s winner ‘Gravity’ was obviously going to win the award regardless of who else got nominated, thankfully this year doesn’t seem so ‘obvious’. In the end, my vote goes towards ‘Interstellar’, a film that once again showcases the strength of practical visual effects, a common trait of the films of Christopher Nolan. They created an actual dust storm for the scenes on Earth. They created the space visuals beforehand so that the actors wouldn’t have to act in front of a green-screen. And the planets that are explored in the film were filmed in real locations. Sure, they were fairly simple in design but if you ask me, that works much better for the kind of movie that ‘Interstellar’ was. The other four films’ visuals are mostly CGI-based so out of them, my runner-up choice would probably be ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’, which once again featured exceptional motion-capture visuals for the ape characters. I mean it’s clear that the whole controversy surrounding whether or not motion-capture performances should be nominated for any major acting awards is still out there, hence why there’s no nomination for Andy Serkis’ work in the film. Ultimately though, like I said before, I’m fine with any of these films taking home this award and unlike last year, it’s not 100% certain which one will.

BEST MAKEUP/HAIRSTYLING

*FOXCATCHER

*THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

*GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

My Pick: Guardians of the Galaxy

Admittedly there isn’t really that much to say about ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ when it comes to hairstyling considering that quite a few of the characters are bald (Drax, Nebula, etc…). Still, you really got to give the makeup artists a lot of credit for their work here. Now you can make the joke that most of the ‘aliens’ in the film were just humans who had paint splashed on them and for the most part that’s kind of true. But I’m mainly referring to the makeup effects for some of the main characters, namely Drax, Nebula, and Ronan, who had unique looks to them in terms of the makeup design. The work for Ronan and Nebula is so effective that Lee Pace and Karen Gillan are pretty much unrecognizable in these two roles. And as for Drax, Dave Bautista literally had to stay standing for the whole time that his makeup was being applied. That takes a lot of patience to get through and ultimately I feel that it paid off nicely. I have the feeling that ‘Guardians’ probably won’t be a ‘front-runner’ for Best Visual Effects so I think it has a better chance at winning this award. If not ‘Guardians’, then ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ which I think is going to win big in the next two categories coming up.

BEST COSTUME/PRODUCTION DESIGN

COSTUME DESIGN

*THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

*INHERENT VICE

*INTO THE WOODS

*MALEFICENT

*MR. TURNER

PRODCUTION DESIGN

*THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

*THE IMITATION GAME

*INTERSTELLAR

*INTO THE WOODS

*MR. TURNER

I’m pairing these categories together because not only do I feel that a lot of times they’re basically just the same thing (even though production design is technically a different aspect of filmmaking than costume design), but because my pick for both categories is the same film.

My Pick: The Grand Budapest Hotel

‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ was actually my first major introduction to the films of Wes Anderson and right away I can say that one thing that you can always expect from a Wes Anderson film is a top-notch production design and colorful, zany visuals to boot. And that’s definitely the case with ‘Budapest’. There was some pretty unique-looking model work done in this film (namely wide shots) and the overall production design has a nice wintery vibe to it. The costume design was also really solid too, with plenty of colorful and eccentric outfits worn by the main characters. So that’s why my vote goes towards ‘Budapest’ in regards to both its production and costume design. I’m not sure if it has much of a chance at winning Best Picture but I have the feeling it’s much more likely to win in these two categories. For my runner-ups in these categories, I’ll be going with the simplistic but visually-pleasing production design of ‘Interstellar’ and the eye-popping fantasy costumes of Disney’s ‘Maleficent’.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

*BIG HERO 6

*THE BOXTROLLS

*HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2

*SONG OF THE SEA

*THE TALE OF THE PRINCESS KAGUYA

My Pick: Big Hero 6

Well seeing how a certain animated film didn’t get a nomination in this category, I have to go with my second favorite animated film from 2014, ‘Big Hero 6’, as my choice for Best Animated Film. In my review, I referred to it as the animated equivalent of a MCU film, resulting in a fun, colorful, and charming effort from Disney, who are clearly in their second animated renaissance when it comes to their films. Not only that, but it is coming off the heels of ‘Frozen’, which won this award last year so I think it has a pretty good chance at a possible win. Though it does have some heavy competition in the form of DreamWorks’ ‘How to Train Your Dragon 2’, which has won this same award at a lot of other award ceremonies including the Golden Globes and the Annie Awards. But at the time I am writing this, I have not seen it… nor have I seen the other nominees in this category. Let me reiterate… I’m not going to complain about ‘The LEGO Movie’ not getting a nomination here. Moving on…

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

*THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

*THE IMITATION GAME

*INTERSTELLAR

*MR. TURNER

*THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

My Pick: Hans Zimmer- Interstellar

While ‘Interstellar’ was a fairly polarizing film amongst critics and audiences, the score by Hans Zimmer wasn’t so it earns my vote for this award. Anyone who went into this movie expecting Zimmer’s score to be too similar to his work on the ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy were more than likely pleasantly surprised to find that this wasn’t the case. A very organ-based score, Zimmer delivered some truly epic motifs as well as some genuinely emotional beats that resulted in a nicely balanced sci-fi film score. In the terms of the former, the best example of this came during the docking scene (‘No Time for Caution’) and, in terms of the latter, was best exemplified in the scene where Cooper leaves home (‘Stay’). Some people felt that the score was too bombastic though I think that was more a problem of the sound design… and yet the sound design was nominated in both ‘Sound Mixing’ and ‘Sound Editing’ (go figure). I guess the Academy wasn’t too bothered by it. I mean, to be fair, it didn’t bother me ‘that much’ either but for the record, it doesn’t get my vote in either of those two categories (that honor goes to ‘Whiplash’ and ‘American Sniper’, respectively). Anyway, my runner-up in this category will be ‘The Imitation Game’, specifically for the final track of the score ‘Alan Turing’s Legacy’. Alexandre Desplat has delivered some truly excellent scores in the past and this one is no exception.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

*EVERYTHING IS AWESOME- THE LEGO MOVIE

*GLORY- SELMA

*GRATEFUL- BEYOND THE LIGHTS

*I’M NOT GONNA MISS YOU- GLEN CAMPBELL: I’LL BE ME

*LOST STARS- BEGIN AGAIN

My Pick: ‘Glory’- Selma

I’ll just be honest… I had never heard of ‘Grateful’, ‘I’m Not Gonna Miss You’, or ‘Lost Stars’ before these nominations were announced. In fact I’m a little disappointed that ‘The Last Goodbye’ from ‘The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies’ wasn’t nominated. Anyway… this category looks to be a contest between the emotionally rousing tune ‘Glory’ by Common and John Legend and the annoyingly catchy ‘Everything is Awesome’ by Tegan and Sara (featuring The Lonely Island). While it was definitely one of those songs that immediately got stuck in your head, ‘Everything is Awesome’ was also a pleasantly upbeat tune that fit perfectly with the overall tone of the film. But in the end my vote goes to ‘Glory’ for its empowering themes and beat that, like ‘Everything is Awesome’, also fit well with the film that it was made for. ‘Selma’ may not have been nominated for Best Actor or Best Director, and it probably won’t win Best Picture, but it definitely looks like it will win for Best Original Song.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

*BIRDMAN

*BOYHOOD

*FOXCATCHER

*THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

*NIGHTCRAWLER

My Pick: ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’

Wes Anderson’s films are full of quirky and hilarious dialogue; ‘Grand Budapest Hotel’ is no exception. My favorite moment, you ask? When Gustave is hanging off of the cliff and Jopling starts stomping the ground trying to knock him off. Gustave seemingly accepts his fate… and then Zero pushes Jopling off (‘Holy S***, you got him!). For my runner-up pick, I’m going with ‘Birdman’ for both its excellent portrayal of an actor trying to recapture his former glory and its fair share of humorous bits of dialogue.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

*AMERICAN SNIPER

*THE IMITATION GAME

*INHERENT VICE

*THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

*WHIPLASH

Quite a bit of controversy surrounding this group of adapted screenplay nominees this year. One of them, ‘Whiplash’, technically isn’t an adapted screenplay at all. Now it’s true that ‘Whiplash’ was originally a short film but that was done just so that investors would sign on to produce the full-length film. So really it should be in the ‘Original Screenplay’ category but it isn’t, apparently due an error by the Academy. And then with the two biopics ‘American Sniper’ and ‘The Imitation Game’, both films attracted controversy for their alleged ‘historical inaccuracy’. In the case of ‘Imitation Game’, it was for ‘allegedly’ underplaying Alan Turing’s homosexuality. And ever since it became a major hit at the box office, ‘American Sniper’ has been criticized by many people for its stance on the war in Iraq and the ‘questionable’ heroism of Chris Kyle. The other major biopic in this category, ‘The Theory of Everything’, has gone by unscathed for the most part. So with that said, where do I stand on this category?

My Pick: Any of the following 3: ‘Whiplash’, ‘American Sniper’, or ‘Imitation Game’

In a sense, I should probably go with ‘Whiplash’ just on the grounds that it should probably win anyway due to it being put in the wrong category. But I also really liked ‘American Sniper’ as well. Now of course I’m aware of all of the controversy surrounding the film but because I’m not really that much of a political person, I’m not really going to say anything about it. Really, the key to the film wasn’t its views on the war in Iraq or how cohesive the overall story was. Where it succeeded the most was how it portrayed the struggles of Chris Kyle, specifically how he felt compelled to keep going on tours of duty because he struggled to adjust back to normal life at home. Kyle’s story is a very fascinating one and Kyle himself is a fascinating person. Another equally fascinating person was Alan Turing and that is why I also give credit for ‘The Imitation Game’ for being a very compelling war story through the eyes of a man whose work forever changed the world. Personally I didn’t think the film ‘underplayed’ Turing’s homosexuality; I think it was handled very subtly showing the personal struggle Turing must’ve gone through his interactions with his co-workers, like how in one scene he risks it all so that he can reveal to his superiors that one of his co-workers was a Soviet spy. Ultimately, I’d be fine with any of these three films winning this award. ‘American Sniper’ and ‘Imitation Game’ were my favorite biopics from a year that was full of great biopics. But ‘Whiplash’ also had a great screenplay too; too bad it accidentally ended up in the wrong category.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

*PATRICIA ARQUETTE- BOYHOOD

*LAURA DERN- WILD

*KEIRA KNIGHTLEY- THE IMITATION GAME

*EMMA STONE- BIRDMAN

*MERYL STREEP- INTO THE WOODS

My Pick: Patricia Arquette- Boyhood

This year I’ve made an effort not to read a lot of ‘Oscar Coverage/Predictions’ posts for fear of this year’s event turning out as ‘predictable’ as it was last year due to the fact that I read a lot of posts that discussed all of the major front-runners for each award. But it’s safe to say that for the Supporting Acting categories this year, we have clear front-runners. In the case of Supporting Actress, it’s Patricia Arquette for her role as the Mom from ‘Boyhood’. Now I’m just going to lay this out there… I wasn’t really that big a fan of ‘Boyhood’ compared to, well, pretty much everyone else in the world given the fact that this is easily the most critically acclaimed film of last year. Now I’m not faulting the film for its ambitious production technique (being shot over 12 years with the same main actors) and I do think it did a great job at capturing the childhood experiences of the main character. But ultimately it didn’t really connect with me that much and I think that is because I never really had a childhood like the one Mason has in the film where my parents were divorced and my family moved around a lot. Now if you did have a childhood like that, then I perfectly understand why you’d connect with this film and really I feel that this will be the key factor as to whether or not you like the film. Again, let me be clear; I don’t hate it, and for the record I hate to use this following term, but I do feel that it’s a bit overrated and it’s ultimately my least favorite out of these 8 Best Picture nominees… boy I can already expect a lot of cinephiles giving me a lot of unfair s*** for this one.

But I will give credit where credit’s due in that Patricia Arquette does a fantastic job in this film as the mother; she and her husband (played by Ethan Hawke, who for the record I would have probably picked as my choice for Best Supporting Actor had there not been a different frontrunner in that category (more on that in a sec)) are probably the most interesting characters in the film. Personally I would’ve loved to see them reconnect as a couple (especially after she went through a series of, to quote the film’s ‘Honest Trailer’, drunken a-holes) but in the end Arquette did a great job portraying the emotional struggles of this character, as shown in scenes like the one near the end where she breaks down as Mason prepares to leave for college as she realizes how fast time has flown by. If I had to choose a runner-up, I’d go with either Keira Knightley from ‘The Imitation Game’, who definitely held her own against Benedict Cumberbatch in that film, or Emma Stone from ‘Birdman’. I’ve heard a lot of people say that Stone was the weakest part of ‘Birdman’ but I disagree. I think she did a really nice job in that film but in the end, I think it’s safe to say that Arquette is going to win this one.         

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

*ROBERT DUVALL- THE JUDGE

*ETHAN HAWKE- BOYHOOD

*EDWARD NORTON- BIRDMAN

*MARK RUFFALO- FOXCATCHER

*J.K. SIMMONS- WHIPLASH

My Pick: J.K. Simmons- Whiplash

There’s no contest here… on pretty much all accounts, it looks like the former boss of the Daily Bugle is going to win the Oscar for his turn as the tough-as-nails music conductor Terrence Fletcher in ‘Whiplash’. Seriously, J.K. Simmons is so frigging amazing in this film and is guaranteed to make you terrified of him whenever he goes all out on any of his students; all those years playing J. Jonah Jameson in the Sam Raimi ‘Spider-Man’ films really paid off. I mean it’s pretty much a given that Simmons is going to win Best Supporting Actor on Sunday. But what if, on the off chance, he doesn’t win it? I mean, this is a really solid list of nominees we have here… and yes I’m saying this even though a lot of people are bashing the nomination of Robert Duvall for ‘The Judge’ due to the mixed-to-negative reactions towards the film. I’m not one of those people (I did like the film) but I think it’s safe to say that Duvall isn’t going to win anyway. As for the other three, like I noted earlier, I’m going with Ethan Hawke as the dad from ‘Boyhood’. The dad was actually my favorite character in that film, primarily due to his all-around likable personality (again to quote the ‘Honest Trailer’, he wasn’t that bad, especially compared to his ex-wife’s other husbands). But like with Best Supporting Actress, I don’t think we’re really going to see an upset here.

BEST ACTRESS

*MARION COTILLARD- TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT

*FELICITY JONES- THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

*JULIANNE MOORE- STILL ALICE

*ROSAMUND PIKE- GONE GIRL

*REESE WITHERSPOON- WILD

My Pick: Rosamund Pike- ‘Gone Girl’

Out of all of the acting categories, this is the one where my choices are the most limited because I’ve only seen two of these films; ‘Gone Girl’ and ‘The Theory of Everything’. And while Felicity Jones did a phenomenal job in ‘The Theory of Everything’, my vote goes to Rosamund Pike for his stand-out performance as Amy Dunne in ‘Gone Girl’. Once the big reveal of ‘Gone Girl’ occurred showing that Amy was the mastermind behind her own disappearance, Pike commands the film from that point on and as I noted before I didn’t expect this character to be as, to put it simply, committed as she was. Regardless of your overall stance on the character, Pike’s performance in the film was outstanding. But of course, Jones’ work as Jane Hawking was also superb so of course, given the fact that I haven’t seen ‘Two Days, One Night’ (which from what I hear only played in like two or three theaters nationwide), ‘Still Alice’, or ‘Wild’, she is my runner-up pick. But it’s looking like we have a different front-runner for this category in Julianne Moore for ‘Still Alice’ given the fact that she’s pretty much won every other major award in this category from the Golden Globes to the SAG Awards. 

BEST ACTOR

*STEVE CARELL- FOXCATCHER

*BRADLEY COOPER- AMERICAN SNIPER

*BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH- THE IMITATION GAME

*MICHAEL KEATON- BIRDMAN

*EDDIE REDMAYNE- THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

My Pick: Eddie Redmayne- The Theory of Everything

In a category full of fantastic performances that all deserve their nominations, I’m going to go with Eddie Redmayne for his turn as Stephen Hawking in ‘The Theory of Everything’. It was a role that required quite the transformation and Redmayne handled that perfectly. I mean, I’m kind of rooting for him anyway in the hopes that the alleged ‘Norbit’ curse that affects actors who have a critically maligned movie come out a few weeks before the Oscars won’t occur for him. Personally, I think this ‘curse’ is a bunch of bull but Redmayne did recently star in ‘Jupiter Ascending’ and of course as we all know, his turn as the villain in that film was one of the biggest acting misfires in recent memory. Still, that doesn’t take away the fact that he was brilliant in ‘Theory of Everything’ so that is why he earns my vote here. On a side note, Julianne Moore is arguably in the same boat as well giving the poor critical and commercial performance of ‘Seventh Son’ but again I really don’t believe in this ‘curse’ so I think that both of them will be fine. Runner-Up? Screw it, I’m fine with any one of these five brilliant performances taking home the Oscar. All five of these performances were brilliant and while it’s looking like it’s mainly a toss-up between Redmayne and Keaton, there’s no denying the phenomenal work that these five actors did in their respective films. In my opinion, this is the best group of nominees from any of the Oscar categories this year.

BEST DIRECTOR

*WES ANDERSON- THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

*ALEJANDRO GONZALEZ INARRITU- BIRDMAN

*RICHARD LINKLATER- BOYHOOD

*BENNETT MILLER- FOXCATCHER

*MORTEN TYLDUM- THE IMITATION GAME

My Pick: Richard Linklater- Boyhood

While I’ve already made it very clear that I’m not the biggest fan of ‘Boyhood’, my vote for Best Director goes to Linklater for his work on the film as this is a case similar to Alfonso Cuaron’s ‘Gravity’ last year. He worked on this film for 12 years and it got to the point where Linklater was going to put Ethan Hawke in charge of finishing the film in case he ended up dying at one point. Thankfully he didn’t and he was finally able to finish the film this year so ultimately he basically deserves this award anyway. I mean to be perfectly honest, this is a rather dull list of nominees for Best Director this year. I’m not discrediting any of the work done by these five directors but I do wish that there were some more ‘interesting’ nominees in this category, like Ava DuVernay for ‘Selma’ (not going to bring up the ‘race’ issue) or David Fincher for ‘Gone Girl’. So from the other four nominees, I guess my runner-up will be Wes Anderson for ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ though it’s unlikely that he’ll actually win.

BEST PICTURE

*AMERICAN SNIPER

*BIRDMAN

*BOYHOOD

*THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

*THE IMITATION GAME

*SELMA

*THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

*WHIPLASH

Just for reference, here are my ratings for these 8 films:

American Sniper- 5/5!

Birdman- 4.5/5

Boyhood- 3.5/5

The Grand Budapest Hotel- 5/5!

The Imitation Game- 5/5!

Selma- 5/5!

The Theory of Everything- 4.5/5

Whiplash- 4/5.5

Personally I feel that this is one of the best groups of Best Picture nominees that I’ve ever seen. And while I may not have been the biggest fan of the critical darling that was ‘Boyhood’, I would be fine with any of these eight films winning Best Picture… but if I had to choose one…

My Pick: AMERICAN SNIPER

Is this the ‘best’ film of 2014? Probably not, but from a personal preference, ‘American Sniper’ was my favorite out of all of these nominees. Is the film perfect? No. Has there been a whole lot of controversy surrounding the film since it became a box-office hit? Yes. But like I said before, I’ve ignored most of this controversy due to the fact that I’m not that much of a ‘political’ person. Besides, there have been quite a few times where the ‘audience favorites’ have won Best Picture before. Remember in 2003 when ‘Return of the King’ won this award? Or when ‘Titanic’ did it back in 1997? Heck, you may even argue that ‘Argo’ was probably the fan favorite a few years ago. My runner-ups for this category are the three other films that I gave 5/5 ratings to. That includes ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’, which probably won’t win but was still very entertaining, ‘The Imitation Game’, my second favorite biopic from last year and one that did really hit me on an emotional level, and ‘Selma’, and again I’m not saying anything about the controversy surrounding this film’s snubs.

So those are my picks for the 87^th Academy Awards. Obviously many of you are going to have different picks so feel free to share them in the comments below. 

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015) review

I’m a big fan of the James Bond franchise and in 2006, the 21^st entry of that prestigious film series, ‘Casino Royale’ was released in theaters. But this one was much different than the Bond films that came before it and there was a fairly good reason for this as the producers decided to reboot the series after the previous film, 2002’s ‘Die Another Day’, was criticized for being way too campy. So as a result, they decided to go the route of the recent ‘Bourne’ films and go for a much grittier take on the character and it’s worked out pretty well for the most part. But if you’re one of those people who misses all of those old-school spy movies then I think you’re really going to enjoy ‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’, which is based off of the comic book series of the same name (minus the Kingsman part) by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons. This also happens to be the second major film from director Matthew Vaughn to be based on a Millar comic, the other being ‘Kick-Ass’. In the end, ‘Kingsman’ is just as zany and ridiculous as those aforementioned old-school Bond films… and also so damn fun thanks to Vaughn’s excellent direction, a stylish look, and a top notch ensemble cast.

When one of his fellow agents dies during a mission, Kingsman secret agent Harry Hart (Colin Firth) personally visits the agent’s widow and their son, Gary ‘Eggsy’ Unwin. He gives them a medal with a phone number on the back and tells them that, if they ever needed any help, all they had to do was just dial the number on the medal and to use a special message. 17 years later, Eggsy (Taron Egerton) is now a juvenile delinquent living with his mom and his abusive stepfather and is constantly getting into trouble with the law. After one arrest, he calls the number on the medal and Hart ends up bailing him out of prison. Eggsy ultimately learns all about the Kingsman and is chosen by Hart as a potential candidate for an open position after another agent is killed during a rescue mission. Eggsy is then enrolled into the training program, which puts him and the other candidates through a series of rigorous tests. While this is going on, technology tycoon Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) is developing a series of special SIM cards that, when activated via a special program, sends out a signal that causes all humans to turn violent. Valentine plans to use these cards to wipeout most of the human population in order to keep it from further destroying the Earth, resulting in the Kingsmen having to stop Valentine before his plan can succeed.

I’ll admit that when the first trailer for this film came out, I wasn’t really sure what to think of it. It looked fine enough but at the time nothing about it really stood out to me that much. But then I saw the red-band trailer and that was the one that really clued me in as to what kind of a film this was and that’s why this film is so damn awesome. As I noted in the intro, it can pretty much be described as a love letter to the old-school spy films (e.g. the pre-2006 Bond films) with its over-the-top tone and action sequences of pure insanity. And even with that in mind, the film actually does manage to stay fairly fresh in terms of its writing, spinning some of the old spy film clichés on its head. Sure, the film’s violence can be just a tad bit overly brutal at times but the film maintains a badass and stylish look, similar to Vaughn’s previous film, ‘X-Men: First Class’, which also felt like an old-school Bond film in regards to its tone and atmosphere. The action sequences are excellent and the film is just entertaining from beginning to end, though I must say the film really shines in the finale. Admittedly some of Vaughn’s films have suffered from weak endings; heck, even ‘First Class’s climax, while not bad, wasn’t that memorable either. But this is where the movie really takes off in terms of its over-the-top action, including one of the most memorable explosion sequences of all time.

One of the best parts of this film comes in the form of its stellar ensemble cast, led by Colin Firth in what I’m pretty sure is his first major role in an action film. And I must say that he handles that transition pretty darn well. He more than holds his own in the action sequences while also maintaining a great sense of charm and wit. Arguably even more impressive in this is newcomer Taron Egerton, who also does a great job at conveying a lot of charm and wit. The fact that he manages to hold his own alongside bigger name actors like Michael Caine (who plays the role of the head of the Kingsmen agents, Arthur) and Mark Strong (who plays Merlin, a senior Kingsmen agent) shows that he has a very promising career ahead of him. And then we have Samuel L. Jackson as the main villain Valentine. Admittedly, like how the first trailer didn’t really ‘wow’ me that much, going in I felt that Jackson might actually be the weak link as it looked like he was just acting way too over the top for this role. But of course, knowing what kind of movie this is, it does work and the end result is an incredibly charismatic villain that also has that badass vibe that one can always expect from Mr. Jackson.

‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’ is quite frankly one of the coolest action films of the past decade or so. Like with his previous film ‘First Class’, director Matthew Vaughn, who if you ask me at this point can do no wrong given his directorial track record, brings such a stylish look to the film while also giving a nice big old dose of craziness in terms of its story, action sequences, and overall tone and atmosphere. It’s not a spy film in the veins of recent entries of the genre like ‘Bourne’ and the ‘Casino Royale’ era Bond films but in this case that’s a good thing as instead it harkens back to the spy films of old while also managing to keep things fresh for a modern era. Yes, it’s over-the-top and ridiculous compared to the spy films of today but it’s just straight up fun. In short, the end result is easily the first major ‘stand-out’ film of 2015. I know that this weekend a lot of people are going to go see ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ and that it’ll probably be the Number 1 film of the weekend. For the record, I’m not one of those people who complains whenever audiences make a film like that successful because that’s just mean. But in all seriousness folks, believe me when I say that you’re definitely going to be much better off with this movie.

Rating: 4.5/5

Thoughts on the Marvel Studios/Sony 'Spider-Man' deal

As we all know, one of the biggest reasons why Marvel Studios started out the Marvel Cinematic Universe with some of their lesser known characters like Iron Man and Thor was because they didn’t have the rights to all of their characters at the time. Mainly, ‘Spider-Man’ was with Sony and ‘X-Men’ and ‘The Fantastic Four’ were with Fox. So that meant that Marvel had to go with what was, at the time, referred to by some as their ‘B-list’ heroes but of course as we all know they have gone on to achieve massive success both critically and commercially with a franchise that is still going strong today. Meanwhile, Fox and Sony have spent the last few years doing their own thing with the Marvel characters that they own. Fox recently got the ‘X-Men’ franchise back in top form with ‘Days of Future Past’ and now all eyes are on the new ‘Fantastic Four’ to see if that film can also deliver. But as for Sony, they’ve had less success than either Fox or Marvel Studios recently, mainly due to their extremely polarizing decision to reboot the ‘Spider-Man’ film franchise just five years after the release of the third Sam Raimi-directed ‘Spider-Man’ film. But last night, a major news bombshell was dropped when it was revealed that Sony and Marvel had reached a deal that would allow everyone’s favorite neighborhood web-slinger to appear in the MCU, something that comic book fans have been waiting for since the very beginning.

First off, let’s go over the details of this new deal. For the record, this deal does not mean that Marvel ‘got back’ the rights to Spider-Man. Sony still owns those rights and will be in charge of distribution, financing, and ultimately having final creative control over future ‘Spider-Man’ films. However, according to this new deal, Spider-Man will make his official debut in the MCU in one of the upcoming ‘Phase 3’ films. And then on July 28, 2017, Sony will release a new ‘Spider-Man’ film but this time Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige will produce the film along with former Sony Pictures Chairman Amy Pascal, who recently resigned from her position at Sony following the controversy surrounding the studio hacking scandal. At the same time, the studio’s proposed spin-off films, ‘Sinister Six’, ‘Venom’, and a film centered around some of the series’ female characters, are apparently still in development presumably not to be produced by Feige. However, it’s also been revealed that this new film is going to recast the role of Spider-Man and that ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ lead Andrew Garfield will not be returning for the new film nor will director Marc Webb. In short, the ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ film series that has polarized many comic book fans ever since it was first announced has officially come to an end and I will admit that I am a little disappointed by that.

Now I’ve made it perfectly clear that I am a big fan of both ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ films… and I know that this put me in the minority when it came to that stance, especially after ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ ended up being one of the most polarizing films of this past year when it was first released while also ending up as the lowest-grossing ‘Spider-Man’ film to date. Nowadays, the film isn’t as polarizing as it was when it first came out and now it is officially deemed by the internet as a major disappointment… something that I’ve been constantly been reminded about anytime there a piece of news surrounding the future of the franchise comes out and believe me, folks, it’s gotten really annoying. I’m not saying that the ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ films are perfect. The first film will never escape the fact that it was a rushed reboot and it’s clear that the filmmakers didn’t realize the biggest problem of ‘Spider-Man 3’ when they made the second film. Not only that but it has also been very much proven that Sony made a lot of changes to the two films to the point where certain plot-points and scenes that were even featured in the trailers were cut out entirely. Still, to the series’ credit, it did do some things better than the Raimi trilogy, namely better action scenes and visuals and far superior leads in Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone.

But in the end, I will say this… this new deal with Marvel is the right move for both Sony and the Spider-Man film franchise and this is because it is now being co-handled by the studio that has proven time and time again that they know what they’re doing. Of course, if you’ve been following me since the beginning, you know that I’ve showered the MCU with nothing but praise time and time again. And for the record it does deserve a lot of that praise giving its excellent track record of films that, if anything, were incredibly entertaining films even if some weren’t really as good as others; in my opinion, there has yet to be a ‘bad’ MCU film. Sony, on the other hand, clearly hit a major roadblock when ‘Amazing Spider-Man 2’ didn’t meet their expectations both critically and commercially. There have been numerous rumors these past few months about the status of their ‘Cinematic Universe’, from shifting release dates around to even rumors that Sam Raimi was going to return to direct another one of these films. For the record, I was supportive of Sony’s ‘plan’ for future films and spin-offs, namely the proposed ‘Sinister Six’ and ‘Venom’ films because I wanted to see how those would’ve turned out. It seems like those two spin-offs are still happening but at the same time I do feel bad for both Andrew Garfield and Marc Webb who clearly were stuck in a not-so-great situation and I do wish that they could’ve gotten, if anything, one last chance so that their franchise can go out on a high note instead of a low one.

So now let’s start speculating about how Spidey is going to be incorporated into the MCU, more specifically which MCU film is he going to appear in? I think it’s safe to assume that he won’t be making a cameo in the post-credits scenes for either ‘Age of Ultron’ or ‘Ant-Man’ given the fact that both of these films are coming out fairly soon (just three months in the case of ‘Age of Ultron’. So given the fact that, in the comics, Spider-Man was a key player in the ‘Civil War’ storyline, it’s incredibly likely that he’ll be appearing in ‘Captain America: Civil War’ after all to play the same role he did in the comics. Though with that said, it’s a little disappointing if this is true because back when it was confirmed that ‘Cap 3’ would be ‘Civil War’, they were touting Black Panther to be the one who would take over Spidey’s role in the story, obviously because at the time, this deal wasn’t official yet. Who knows? Maybe they’ll have the same overall role in the story but each of them will side with either Cap or Iron Man. At the same time, I’d actually also be interested to perhaps see Spider-Man make a cameo appearance in one of Marvel’s TV shows, either ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ (which I would be extremely excited about given that it’s my favorite show on TV right now) or one of the upcoming Netflix shows, the latter of which could definitely work seeing how it takes place in New York.

As for the new Spider-Man film, believe it or not it now beats the record previously set by the first ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ film as one of the quickest franchise reboots ever; in this case of this new film, now just three years after the last film. But this time, I’m pretty sure we’re not going to get the origin story again; after all, we’ve already seen the whole ‘getting bit by a spider’ and the ‘death of Uncle Ben’ plot-points twice now. We don’t need to see that again. And here’s a suggestion… sometime in the near future (not in the first new film but in a sequel), why not introduce Miles Morales as the next Spider-Man like in the comics? Sadly, it seemed like they weren’t going to do that with the ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ films, even after Garfield was supposedly going to step down from the role after the third film. But now that those films are no longer happening, it seems much more likely this could happen. As for who’ll direct this film, I noted before that there were rumors that Sam Raimi was going to return but unless Sony apologizes to him for trying to rush him into making a fourth film, I doubt he’ll be back for this one. The other major rumor is that Phil Lord and Chris Miller are being approached to do it and well, given their phenomenal track record, I’d be in full support of that decision.

So I know a lot of people are excited about Spider-Man ‘coming home’ to the MCU but for the record, this doesn’t mean that Marvel got the rights to the character back. Sony’s still in control of that and instead, Marvel Studios and Sony are going to work together on all future Spider-Man related film projects and overall, this is probably the best deal they could’ve made and not just have Marvel 100% get back the rights. After all, Sony hasn’t been having a good run recently when it comes to their films and Spider-Man was basically their last major film franchise left. So with this new deal, both sides get something out of it instead of one of them being left out in the cold. Now Spider-Man can finally appear in the MCU, something that fans have been dying to see happen, and by all accounts it looks like future ‘Spider-Man’ films are going to turn out much better than before now that Feige and his team now have a say in how the films turn out. Still, you do have to feel bad for Andrew Garfield and Marc Webb given how everything went downhill for them because of what happened with ‘Amazing Spider-Man 2’. Part of me wishes that these were the new films that Feige and co. would work on instead of just rebooting the film franchise AGAIN!! Still, even as someone who still loves ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ films, I can’t really complain about this deal that much because it’s clear that Spidey is going to have a much brighter future now in film. Now if only Marvel and Fox can get along…

R.I.P. ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ films (2012-2014). I’ll still defend you till the day I die.

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (2015) review

As I’ve previously mentioned quite a few times this past week, the show ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ has been in a fairly steep decline in the years since the series’ first film, ‘The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie’, was released in 2004. Ultimately the biggest reason for this has been due to the increasingly stale and mediocre writing, from the overly drawn out personality traits that have begun to make most of the main characters fairly unlikable to rehashed plot-points and characters to imagery that’s far too grotesque, graphic, and disturbing for a kids’ show… and in the case of this show, that’s saying a lot. I haven’t watched any of the newer episodes of the series in quite some time, so I had my fingers crossed when it came to the series’ second major film release, ‘Sponge Out of Water’, in the hopes that, if anything, it would at least be better than what we’ve seen from the show these past few years. And thankfully, I’m pleased to say that, for the most part, this film is a step up in quality from the show’s recent run. I say ‘for the most part’ because admittedly there are some cases where this film veers toward the show’s recent habits but overall this does feel much more in line with the show’s original ‘pre-movie’ run, and considering what has come from this series in recent years, that’s a good thing.

The plot of the film is fairly simple; everything’s all hunky-dory in Bikini Bottom until Plankton (Mr. Lawrence), as usual, tries to steal the Krabby Patty formula from the Krusty Krab. And of course, SpongeBob (Tom Kenny) and Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown) keep Plankton from getting the formula. But this time, the formula suddenly disappears while SpongeBob and Plankton are fighting over it. Despite the obvious fact that Plankton had nothing to do with it, Mr. Krabs accuses Plankton of stealing it. SpongeBob ends up protecting Plankton from Mr. Krabs’ wrath and as a result, he becomes a social pariah amongst the people of Bikini Bottom, which then causes everything in Bikini Bottom to fall into complete turmoil and anarchy due to the fact that Krabby Patties aren’t being made. This results in SpongeBob and Plankton having to team up to try and find the formula. Eventually, they learn that the formula was stolen by a pirate named Burger Beard (played by Antonio Banderas), with the aid of a magical book that makes anything that is written in it come true, in order to set up his fast food restaurant. This leads SpongeBob and his friends to have to travel up to the surface and, with the help of the magic book as well, become superheroes so that they can get the formula back from Burger Beard.

Like I said in my review of the first film, ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ is a weird show, plain and simple. And the same can be said for both of these films as well. But of course the writers just go with it and that’s part of the franchise’s charm. Like the first film, ‘Sponge Out of Water’ does maintain the show’s visual style as well as its humor and on a positive note, the writing feels more in line with the show’s original run. The writing is smarter and there aren’t as many annoying or aggravating moments similar to what we come to expect from the show nowadays. But even with that said, there admittedly are some instances where the current poor trends of the show tend to slip in, namely some mean-spirited character moments. A line spoken by Mr. Krabs in a scene where SpongeBob is about to be ‘sacrificed’ (if you see the film, you’ll know what I’m talking about) is particularly cringe-worthy. Thankfully, there are only a few instances in the film where stuff like this occurs. Obviously not all of the jokes hit (that and this is aimed towards kids so I have the feeling adults won’t get much out of this unless they were already fans of the show) but for the most part, the film has a solid amount of funny moments and visual gags.

However, something that’s also worth noting is that the film does have one rather noticeable flaw and that comes from the writing. While it is stronger than what it has been on the show, the overall story is rather scatterbrained. One of the biggest elements of the film’s promotional material is that the characters come to the surface and become superheroes. But guess what? That’s only in the final act of the film and not only that, but if you’ve seen most of the trailers, then you’ve already seen the majority of this part of the film. Because of this, the live-action sequences do feel a little tacked on. But on the bright side, because of this, the film actually does stick with the traditional animation the show has been known for most of the 93-minute runtime. It’s not a case where most of the film was done with computer animation, which is what I feared it would be going in. The computer animation is actually really good here but as I noted earlier, this part of the film doesn’t really play that big a part in the overall plot. The film really could’ve benefitted from having a tighter script that did a better job at balancing out these two parts of the story.

Unlike the first movie, which had some notable celebrity voices including Scarlett Johansson and Alec Baldwin, just to name a few, there aren’t any major ‘cameos’ in this film when it comes to the voice cast. It’s just the main stars of the show but they all do a solid job as usual as they’ve been doing ever since the show first debuted back in 1999 (boy writing that just made me feel so old). In fact, if this film does have one advantage over the previous film, it is that it gives some of the other main characters, like Squidward and Sandy, more to do whereas in the first film it was mostly from SpongeBob and Patrick’s perspective. The only major ‘cameo’ in this film comes in the form of Antonio Banderas as the main villain Burger Beard. As I noted earlier, the live-action sequences felt a little tacked on to a film that had a story that was, for the most part, all over the place. As a result, and without really giving anything major away, Burger Beard admittedly isn’t that much of an intimidating villain in this. Despite this, it’s clear that Banderas is having a lot of fun in this fairly campy and over-the-top role and his charisma and energy, if anything, do make up for the fact that the character is a rather weak villain.

‘The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water’, as a whole, is a noticeable improvement over the show’s recent run, though admittedly it’s not perfect. This is mainly due to the fact that the overall story is a bit of a mess and the major selling point of SpongeBob and the gang becoming superheroes actually doesn’t play as big a part in the film as the trailers suggested. Still, despite the occasional veering into the show’s recent bad habits, the writing does at least feel more in line with the show’s original run with a lot more clever humor and visual gags. Plus, if you’re a fan of traditional animation, then you’ll be pleased to know that most of this film is done in this style of animation rather than computer animation, which is only reserved for the final act of the film. In short, while I can’t say that this film is as good as the first film, it does serve as a nice little ‘return to form’ for this long-running series that will more than likely satisfy anybody who felt that the show hasn’t been as good as it was before the first film, which for the record it was. Heck, in some cases it might even induce some nostalgic memories from the past. This film was mainly worked on by the series’ original creative team (including series’ creator Stephen Hillenburg) and the final product shows that they gave it their all, resulting in a silly but also very fun little animated film.

Rating: 3.5/5

Jupiter Ascending (2015) review

The Wachowskis haven’t really been on that great a run this past decade in regards to the films that they’ve directed. Of course as we all know, the sibling directing duo first made headlines in 1999 when they made ‘The Matrix’, which is now regarded as one of the ground-breaking films of its time. But pretty much everything else after that has not fared as well either critically or commercially. First there were the two Matrix sequels, ‘Reloaded’ and ‘Revolutions’, which were both released in 2003. Both films fared pretty well commercially but for the most part they’ve been universally bashed by fans of the first film. All of their directorial efforts after that have been even less successful and have bombed at the box office. There was their 2008 adaptation of ‘Speed Racer’, which I’ll admit that I do remember liking when I first saw it. And then that was followed up by 2012’s ‘Cloud Atlas’, which was easily one of the most polarizing films of that year, and I for one was among those who weren’t that enthusiastic about it. Sadly it seems that this streak of box-office bombs is set to continue with their latest film, and first original directorial project since ‘The Matrix’, ‘Jupiter Ascending’. And unfortunately, the fact that the film itself is quite a mess in terms of its story doesn’t help it either.

The film takes place in a world where the planet Earth is actually under the control of a powerful alien dynasty known as the House of Abrasax who harvest the planet’s living creatures every few millenniums in order to produce a special serum that basically makes them immortal. When Abrasax’s matriarch dies, her three children; Balem (Eddie Redmayne), Kalique (Tuppence Middleton), and Titus (Douglas Booth) come into conflict over the ‘inheritance’ AKA Earth. However, they soon learn of another ‘heir’ to the throne who comes in the form of Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), a young, unsuspecting, and unlucky Earth woman who spends most of her time working as a caretaker along with her mother. She soon learns that she possesses the same genetic signature as the former matriarch of the House of Abrasax and is the true heir to the throne. When Balem puts a bounty on her head so that he can collect the inheritance for himself, a genetically-engineered ex-military hunter named Caine Wise (Channing Tatum), along with the help of his old military ally Stinger Apini (Sean Bean), comes to her rescue so that she can probably collect her inheritance before Balem ends up harvesting Planet Earth.

One thing that you can always expect from the Wachowskis is that their films will be full of eye-popping visuals and that is definitely the case here. This film was pushed back a few months so that they could have more time to work on the visuals and in that regard, that extra time did pay off. True the visuals can sometimes be a major eyesore at times due to the occasional visual overload but they’re still quite visually appealing. The world-building of this original story is pretty impressive and the action sequences are also pretty solid, especially a key chase sequence in the beginning in Chicago. However, the story is where the film really starts to come apart. The best way I can describe it is that it feels just a bit too overly complicated at times when in reality it’s sort of a fairly simple story. There are quite a lot of twists and turns but not in a good way. In fact, if you’re going into this expecting an action packed sci-fi film, then prepare to be very disappointed because there actually really isn’t that much action in this; it’s more dialogue-based and that does get rather boring after a while. Not only is the story dull, but a lot of the characters aren’t that interesting either. Heck, some don’t even get much development at all, like the two other Abrasax heirs who disappear from the movie entirely by the end of the film and the alleged ‘motivation’ that I read about online about how Stinger was looking for a cure for his daughter’s illness, which for the record is never explored once in this.

Jupiter herself is also a conundrum of a character. While she does serve her purpose of being the ‘avatar’ for the audience in this strange sci-fi world, she doesn’t have that much of an arc in this and we really don’t see her grow that much; for the most part she’s just a damsel in distress. While the character is a fairly weak female lead, Mila Kunis, to her credit, does a good enough job with the limited material that she has to work with. Channing Tatum and Sean Bean, on the other hand, do have a little more to work with, though still not that much, and they do have some pretty solid camaraderie with one another. But as for Eddie Redmayne as the main villain Balem, the poor guy’s lucky that he has that Oscar nomination for ‘Theory of Everything’ because let me tell you, this performance is more than likely going to be amongst next year’s Razzie nominations. Most of the time he whispers his dialogue sounding like Lord Voldemort from ‘Harry Potter’ in need of a throat lozenge and other times he suddenly shouts at the top of his lungs a la Michael Shannon or Gary Oldman. It’s an incredibly awkward performance but thankfully he’s not in the movie too much. Seriously, he disappears for at least about 30-40 minutes in the middle of the film before resurfacing for the finale. Though in the end, I think this is more a case of bad direction than it is the fault of Redmayne.

For the record, I didn’t ‘hate’ ‘Jupiter Ascending’ as there are good things in it, like the visuals, the action sequences, and some of the performances. But for the most part, it’s just a mess and that’s mainly because of the story being more complicated than it really needed to be. Not only that, but some plotlines are never fully resolved and the film is actually rather boring at times due to the fact that a lot of the film mostly consists of scenes of dialogue instead of action sequences, which is even more disappointing given the fact that this was being referred to as a mix between ‘Star Wars’ and ‘The Matrix’. That and, well, there’s also one of the biggest acting misfires in recent history in regards to Eddie Redmayne’s turn as the main villain Balem. Hopefully this won’t be a case of the supposed ‘Norbit’ curse that ‘supposedly’ plagues any Oscar-nominated actor who has a critically maligned movie come out in the weeks before the Oscars. In the end, it’s pretty much certain that ‘Jupiter Ascending’ is going to be a box-office bomb which is sad because A.) It’s clear the Wachowskis are really passionate about their work and B.) It just sucks in general whenever a film bombs. But unlike a film like ‘Jack the Giant Slayer’, ‘Jersey Boys’, or ‘Warrior’, there’s not much about this 2015 equivalent of ‘Attack of the Clones’ that I can defend.

Rating: 2/5

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004) review

It’s interesting to note that when the first major film adaptation of ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ was being made, it was originally intended to be the official series finale. This was because series creator Stephen Hillenburg didn’t want the show to ‘jump the shark’, the case where a TV show begins to drop in quality as a result of an incredibly gimmicky moment (the most infamous example being the classic series ‘Happy Days’ when the main character Fonzie literally jumped over a shark, hence the phrase ‘jumping the shark’). But, because of the film’s success both critically and commercially, Nickelodeon decided to renew the series for another season and the show is still on today, currently in its ninth season. Though of course as we all know, the show ultimately has declined in quality ever since the film was released so in hindsight maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for Nick to renew the series after all. Thankfully that’s not the case with ‘The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie’. Like the three seasons of the show that came before it, this film maintains the same great comedic writing and surrealist nature that the series was known for while also effectively transitioning the show to the big screen. This results in a solid animated film that’s not only full of excellent animation but also a lot of heart as well to the point where it could arguably stand toe-to-toe with the likes of Disney and Pixar.

The film begins as SpongeBob (Tom Kenny) eagerly awaits the opening of the new Krusty Krab restaurant (simply titled the ‘Krusty Krab 2’) in the hopes that his boss Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown) will appoint him as the new restaurant’s manager given his stellar track record as an employee of the original Krusty Krab. However, on the day of the grand opening ceremony, Mr. Krabs ends up giving the job to Squidward (Rodger Bumpass) instead due to the fact that SpongeBob is ‘just a kid’. Meanwhile, Mr. Krabs’ long-time business rival Plankton (Mr. Lawrence) comes up with a new plan to steal the formula to the Krabby Patty. He steals the crown of King Neptune (Jeffrey Tambor), has it sent far away to the mysterious ‘Shell City’, and has Mr. Krabs framed for the theft. When Neptune plans to execute Mr. Krabs for the crime, SpongeBob intervenes and offers to go to Shell City to get the crown back. So with the help of Neptune’s daughter Mindy (Scarlett Johansson), SpongeBob and Patrick (Bill Fagerbakke) head out for Shell City as they face many obstacles, including a hit man named Dennis (Alec Baldwin) hired by Plankton to stop them from completing their mission and a giant Cyclops (in reality a human diver), on their quest to get back the crown and return it to King Neptune in six days so that they can save Mr. Krabs, all the while Plankton begins to take complete control of Bikini Bottom now that he has finally acquired the secret formula.

Fans of the show will no doubt appreciate that this film retains the same overall style of the show, especially in terms of its surreal nature. Simply put, ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’… is a very weird show and the film is just as bizarre. How weird, you ask? Well there’s one scene where SpongeBob and Patrick are on dry land and they meet none other than David Hasselhoff, who ends up transporting them back to Bikini Bottom as he literally turns into a human speedboat. So yes, this film, like the show itself, is fairly weird but if you can accept that then you’ll enjoy this film fine enough. The animation is pretty top-notch, which makes sense given the fact that the animators had more time to work on the animation for this film as opposed to the much more limited timeframe they had while working on the show. And of course, the comedic writing is as spot-on as it was during the first three seasons of the show, resulting in a film that is full of memorable moments, from SpongeBob and Patrick trying to steal the key to their car back from a biker bar to the aforementioned scene with Hasselhoff. Not only that, but the film also has a good amount of heart as well, with a strong message about being yourself, as shown through SpongeBob’s overall character arc here as he tries to prove to everyone that he’s not ‘a kid’ but eventually that it’s okay to be ‘a kid’ at times.

The main members of the series’ voice cast all return to reprise their roles in the film, and they all do a great job here. Unlike later episodes of the series, the script doesn’t try to over-emphasize their own unique character traits to an annoying degree. SpongeBob may be naïve and childish and Patrick is just plain stupid but the writing doesn’t over-play those characteristics in any way here and they are both very endearing characters as a result. By comparison, more recently the show has over-played these traits, making SpongeBob very annoying and, in some cases, rather creepy and Patrick so dumb to the point where a lot of times he’s a total prick to everyone around him, even his ‘best friend’ SpongeBob at times. So nowadays this movie serves as a great example of when the writing was smarter compared to what we see on the show today. The new additions to the voice cast are excellent as well. Alec Baldwin is clearly having a lot of fun camping it up in the role of Dennis, Scarlett Johansson provides a sweet persona to the role of Mindy, who’s clearly shown to be nicer and in many cases smarter than her father, and Jeffrey Tambor is perfectly cast in the role of King Neptune, with the majority of the character’s humor coming from his struggle to hide the fact that he’s balding. I don’t even care that the Neptune in this film looks nothing like the Neptune in the show. The scene where Neptune reveals his ‘thinning’ hairline, which results in everyone yelling ‘Bald! Bald! Bald!’ (even one guy’s eyes start to burn), is one of the funniest moments in the entire film.

While Stephen Hillenburg didn’t want ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ to ‘jump the shark’, in a way its first film adaptation actually does kind of serve as its ‘jumping the shark’ moment because at the moment it is currently the last really great thing to come out of this franchise. So because of this, it probably would’ve been better for this film to be the series finale so that it would go out on a high note instead of a low one, which given the current track record of the series it’s highly likely to be. Still, ‘The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie’ is not only a well-done animated film adaptation of this once-great show but it also now serves as a solid piece of nostalgia for anyone who grew up with this show like I did. Like the original first three seasons, the movie maintains the series’ trademark style of humor, its tone, and its admittedly weird and bizarre atmosphere. Again, only in this series would you see something like David Hasselhoff turning into a speedboat. But what also makes this movie so great is its heart and its strong message to kids about being yourself. ‘The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie’ is easily one of the best non-Pixar animated films of the last decade or so and even though the show in recent years hasn’t been up to par in terms of it quality, I’m hopeful that the upcoming sequel film, ‘Sponge Out of Water’, will at least be a step up from the show’s run as of late.

Rating: 4.5/5

Top 25 Favorite Episodes of 'SpongeBob SquarePants'

When it comes to some of my all-time favorite cartoons, easily one of the best is ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’. Created by marine biologist/animator Stephen Hillenburg in 1999, ‘SpongeBob’ has since gone on to become the flagship show of Nickelodeon and is currently now in its ninth season. For those who are unfamiliar with the show, it centers on the titular SpongeBob (voiced by Tom Kenny), a cheerful and optimistic but also fairly naïve yellow sea sponge who lives in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom where he has many fun adventures with his friends, which include his best friend Patrick Star, his grumpy neighbor Squidward Tentacles, and many more. In my opinion, this is the quintessential show of my generation. As a kid, this was easily one of my favorite shows ever and even though I’m now older and technically past the age where I should be watching cartoons, I still find myself endlessly quoting this show all the time… and that really gives you a great idea of how this show has such a long-lasting appeal with its excellent comedic writing, colorful animation (even with the occasional incredibly weird and detailed imagery that pops up from time to time), and memorable characters. Yes, ‘SpongeBob’ is quite frankly one of the best shows of the 21^st century… well, the first few seasons at least…

Yes, similar to other animated shows like ‘Family Guy’ and ‘The Simpsons’, ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ has been in quite a decline in recent years, specifically after the release of the first movie (a review of that is also on the way, for the record). And the main reason for this is sadly quite simple; the writing has become very stale as it’s clear that the writers have really run out of good material for this show to the point where sometimes they even rehash old concepts and characters. Not only that, but most of the main characters have started to become fairly annoying as a result of the writers overplaying their distinct characteristics, like SpongeBob’s annoyingness and Patrick’s stupidity just to name a few examples. I’m also now very aware of the writers having the tendency to promise big things when it comes to ‘special’ episodes only for those episodes ultimately being unable to live up to the hype. Now let me just make this clear in that I haven’t been watching a lot of the newer episodes in recent years but I’m aware of some of the more infamous episodes of the series, like ‘Stuck in the Wringer’ and ‘The Splinter’. So in short, I’m hopeful that the new SpongeBob movie, ‘Sponge Out of Water’, is going to at least be a step up in quality from what we’ve gotten from the show in recent years. However, I’m rather cautious about it mainly due to the fact that most of it is going to be done with 3-D computer animation instead of the traditional 2-D animation that the show is known for.

Still, in honor of the impending release of ‘Sponge Out of Water’, today I’m honoring one of my favorite shows of all time with a Top 10 list of my personal favorite episodes of ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’… actually, you know what, forget that… it’s not just a Top 10 list. Instead, I’m doing a Top 25 list. Why? Because that’s how good of a show this is. Now for the record, when I mean ‘episodes’, I mean the 11-minute segments and not the pairs of segments that run during every half-hour timeslot. Also, I’m just going to put this out there, yes this list is mostly consisting of episodes from the first three seasons of the show, that being the series’ initial run before the first movie. Sure it may seem like I’m a little biased but as many of you already know this show really hasn’t been that good recently and in all seriousness the best episodes of the series really did come from its early run before the movie came out. And of course, this is all just my opinion so if you don’t see one of your favorites on here, you’ll know why and of course, because there are so many great episodes of the show I do want to keep this list fairly condensed to a certain number so admittedly that might result in some of the most popular episodes not making the cut.

So, now that I’ve gotten my fairly long intro out of the way, here are my Top 25 personal favorite episodes of ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’. But first, of course, let’s check out my honorable mentions and I do have quite a few; 10 in fact…

HONORABLE MENTIONS

AS SEEN ON TV

AKA what happens when fame goes to SpongeBob’s head when he appears on TV, even though it’s just a commercial for the Krusty Krab and you don’t even see his face during it.

NASTY PATTY

Talk about a fairly dark plot; SpongeBob and Mr. Krabs think that they’re being scammed by a fake health inspector so they try and kill him with a disgusting Krabby Patty and it seems that they succeed… too bad that health inspector is actually not a phony.

PRESSURE

SpongeBob and Sandy start to get competitive over who’s better; land creatures or sea creatures. Squidward, Patrick, and Mr. Krabs also end up getting involved as well and it ends with the four sea creatures going up to dry land, resulting in Sandy having to then save their butts when they run afoul of some ‘locals’ (seagulls).

PRE-HIBERNATION WEEK

Sandy ends up bringing SpongeBob along to do some extreme sports and when SpongeBob finds that he can’t handle it anymore, he opts to go into hiding. They even have the rock band Pantera do the theme music for the episode and it, like the stuff Sandy and SpongeBob do in this episode, is EXTREME!!!

THE FRY COOK GAMES

Yep, in SpongeBob, there’s an event called ‘The Fry Cook Games’ which is basically the fast food employee equivalent of the Olympics… and here SpongeBob and Patrick find themselves as rivals pinned against one another by the original fast food rivals Mr. Krabs and Plankton.

IMITATION KRABS

Of course, one of the common plot threads of the show is Mr. Krabs’ business rival Plankton’s attempts to steal the formula to the Krabby Patty. This is easily one of his most memorable plans as he builds a robot version of Mr. Krabs and tries to fool SpongeBob into giving him the secret Krabby Patty formula. I mean sure you’d have to be an idiot to fall for that robot suit (then again SpongeBob isn't really that smart either so yeah...) but it’s another memorable episode nevertheless.

MERMAID MAN AND BARNACLE BOY: EPISODES 1-5

I decided to just group together the first five installments of this ‘series’ of episodes, in which SpongeBob and Patrick get to meet their heroes, Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy (a parody of Batman and Robin; heck they even got Adam West and Burt Ward from the 60’s Batman series to voice the younger versions of Mermaid and Barnacle Boy), in one spot instead of just listing them all separately. They’re all pretty memorable, starting off with the first episode where SpongeBob and Patrick annoy the superhero duo in the hopes of getting them out of retirement. Then that’s followed by the ‘sequel’, in which SpongeBob gets to tag along with them after winning a contest. The best of the quintet might just be the third one, where SpongeBob and Patrick accidentally awaken MM and BB’s arch-nemesis Man Ray (excellently voiced by John Rhys-Davies) and try to turn him into a good person. The fourth episode, where SpongeBob finds MM’s utility belt and accidentally shrinks all of Bikini Bottom, is memorable too but admittedly it’s probably my least favorite of the five. In contrast, my personal favorite is the fifth one, where BB actually becomes a bad guy when he feels that he’s been ridiculed for being a sidekick for too long. SpongeBob and the gang end up becoming superheroes themselves… but it doesn’t go too well.

TEXAS

The key thing to take from this episode; don’t mess with someone from Texas, especially if that person is a land squirrel living in the ocean who at one point sings a song and at one point in that song has the voice of country music artist Junior Brown. Because you if make fun of Texas in front of her face, she’s going to get you!

THE CHAPERONE

Here’s a pretty fun little episode of SpongeBob trying to act cool (more specifically ‘long, tan, and handsome’) when he volunteers to be Mr. Krabs’ daughter Pearl’s date to her prom (and yes, Mr. Krabs has a whale for a daughter… I’m just as confused as you are, and to my knowledge they’ve yet to address this on the show).

PLANKTON!

Finally, we have the very first episode to feature the 1% evil, 99% hot gas filled Plankton, as he takes control of SpongeBob via mind control to force him to hand over the Krabby Patty formula… and of course he still ends up failing at it. Also, did you know that seaweed is made of 50% sea and 50% weed… boy a lot of our favorite cartoons had some really adult jokes that we never really got until we were adults.

TOP 25

For the record, I’m not actually going to list these episodes; instead I’m just going to name them in chronological order (according to the internet, despite the fact that some of them are actually a little out of order on Wikipedia… just roll with it, folks).

TEA AT THE TREEDOME

I know some of you might be wondering what about the very first episode, ‘Help Wanted’, but unfortunately it just missed the cut. But as for this episode, it’s a fun little ‘fish out of water’ story (both figuratively and literally) when SpongeBob first meets Sandy Cheeks, a land squirrel from Texas living underwater in a tree dome. Sandy invites him over for tea but SpongeBob soon realizes he can’t survive without any water. My favorite scene of the episode is when SpongeBob, who has already dried up quite a bit due to the lack of water, starts looking at a vase full of ‘ice cold water’ that Sandy has put some flowers into. He stares at it for a little thinking to himself that he doesn’t need it… and then after a quick moment of silence, he yells out, ‘I NEED IT!!’ and then chugs all of the water from that vase. Thankfully by the end of the episode, SpongeBob and Patrick, who for the duration of the episode helped SpongeBob be ‘fancy’ (which just amounted to him holding his pinky finger up in the air) are given water-filled helmets so that they can probably stay in the tree dome without drying up. All in all, it’s just a classic episode. And speaking of classics…

RIPPED PANTS

If you ask me, the best pairing of episodes is ‘Bubblestand’ and ‘Ripped Pants’, which are easily two of the most iconic episodes of the entire series (and yes, like ‘Help Wanted’, ‘Bubblestand’ just barely missed the cut). In this episode, SpongeBob starts to get jealous when Sandy starts hanging out with Larry the Lobster. He then tries to act as cool as Larry but ends up embarrassing himself when he accidentally rips his pants, hence the title. However, when SpongeBob realizes that everyone else is amused by this, he tries to capitalize on it and ultimately it ends up backfiring when everyone gets bored by it. Ultimately, he realizes his mistake and amends his relationship with Sandy after performing a memorable musical number, ‘Ripped Pants’, along with three other ‘beach losers’, including a female fish who didn’t put on any sunscreen, a male fish who accidentally got sand in his buns (burger buns, for the record), and a whale who was forgotten about after getting buried in the sand. This episode has some solid messages, including the idea to not try too hard to impress someone by being something you’re not and that a joke can only run so far before it starts to get old. That’s why ‘Ripped Pants’ is one of the most famous, and best, episodes of the entire series.

PICKLES

I just love this episode for its great underdog storyline where SpongeBob finds himself having to regain his confidence when he makes a major mistake. One day at the Krusty Krab, SpongeBob makes a Krabby Patty for the incredibly picky Bubble Bass who, after eating it, claims that SpongeBob forgot the pickles. This results in SpongeBob losing his confidence as he finds that he starts to forget how to make a Krabby Patty. And not only that but he also starts to forget how to do pretty much everything else as well, from being in the proper position to go to bed to mixing up his words when he speaks. It’s only with help from Mr. Krabs that SpongeBob finally remembers how to make a Krabby Patty as he gets back at Bubble Bass the next day at work and there’s a pretty fun reveal in regards to how Bubble Bass tried to fool him into thinking he forgot the pickles by sticking the pickles underneath his tongue. All in all, this is a great episode with lot of visual humor when we see SpongeBob start to get really confused during certain scenes while at the same time also giving us a great story of motivation and confidence.

HALL MONITOR

Some of the best scenarios from the series came whenever SpongeBob naively thinks he’s helping people when in reality he’s not, and there’s no better example of this than ‘Hall Monitor’. In this episode, SpongeBob is chosen as the hall monitor of the day while at Boating School. However, he ends up making an extremely long speech that goes on for the whole day of class meaning that he’s unable to do any Hall Monitor related things. Feeling sorry for him, Mrs. Puff lets him wear the uniform for the rest of the day and SpongeBob then goes out into the city acting as the Hall Monitor… but this results in chaos from his actions, including causing multiple traffic accidents while acting as a traffic guard and breaking into people’s homes when in reality he’s trying to ‘warn them’ about leaving their windows open. This results in him being labeled as a ‘maniac’ by the people of Bikini Bottom but SpongeBob doesn’t realize this and thinks that there’s another ‘maniac’ causing trouble. The best scene of this episode is when SpongeBob thinks he’s being followed by the Maniac when Patrick (who helps SpongeBob out on the case) spots him but of course in reality it’s Patrick looking at SpongeBob the whole time.

PIZZA DELIVERY

Ah, this one’s a classic; SpongeBob and Squidward head out on delivery for the Krusty Krab when someone calls in ordering a pizza despite the fact that they don’t serve pizza, nor do they deliver for that matter. However, they end up getting trapped in the middle of nowhere resulting in them trying to find a way back, all the while Squidward attempts to steal the pizza from SpongeBob and have it for himself. By the way, this episode also has one of the biggest assholes to ever come out of animation in the form of the customer who ordered the pizza. When SpongeBob and Squidward finally reach his house, he actually doesn’t accept the pizza just because they didn’t bring him a drink that he ordered. So you mean to tell me that he’s so obsessed about getting his drink that he doesn’t pay for his pizza that he ordered, despite the fact that he probably has something else he can have at home for a drink not to mention that he lives in the ocean… what an asshole! Well, thankfully Squidward does not have any of his BS and just slams the pizza in his face ‘on the house’. All in all, despite the jackass customer, ‘Pizza Delivery’ is a very well-written episode and full of memorable moments.

Seriously tough, this guy... total prick!

SANDY’S ROCKET

Like ‘Hall Monitor’, this is another fun episode where SpongeBob and Patrick don’t realize the trouble they’re causing. In this episode, Sandy is building a rocket to go to the moon and after a whole lot of begging, she allows SpongeBob to tag along. However, the night before they head out, Patrick asks SpongeBob if Sandy’s rocket is ‘alien-proof’, despite SpongeBob being assured by Sandy that there are no aliens. Just to be sure, Patrick and SpongeBob head to the rocket to ‘clean’ it with ‘alien repellent’ but end up accidentally starting the rocket and they head off into space. However, they don’t end up landing on the moon and land back in Bikini Bottom but because they don’t realize this, they think they’re actually on the moon and that all of their friends are actually aliens in disguise resulting in them capturing everyone in Bikini Bottom. It’s a fun episode with great buildup and a hilarious payoff when SpongeBob actually does land on the moon thinking he’s back in Bikini Bottom and then finally realizing what just happened.

F.U.N.

In this episode, SpongeBob finally starts to feel sorry for Plankton after his numerous failed attempts at stealing the Krabby Patty formula. So, he starts to hang out with Plankton and the two actually do become friends. However, Mr. Krabs tries to prove to SpongeBob that Plankton’s fooling him, which of course he is but for a while SpongeBob, as usual, naively doesn’t believe Mr. Krabs. This was another fun little episode and it was cool to see the usually mean-spirited Plankton look like a nice guy for a while, even if in the end it was all just an act that he was putting on. And yes, that ‘F.U.N.’ song that SpongeBob and Plankton sing is catchy as hell.

ARRGH!

Argh… we got ourselves a pirate-themed episode here, me mateys! Okay, don’t worry, I’m done talking pirate. Anyway, in this episode, SpongeBob and Patrick end up getting recruited by Mr. Krabs to go on a treasure hunt after they had convinced him to play a treasure hunt board game with them one day. This episode has such a great payoff after its buildup; SpongeBob and Patrick learn that the map Mr. Krabs has been using is their board game, they actually do find the treasure, get into an argument over who gets the gold, with Mr. Krabs obviously wanting it all to themselves, and ultimately they end up waking the real owner of the treasure, the Flying Dutchman, who gives SpongeBob and Patrick TWO GOLD DOUBLOONS (!) but Mr. Krabs only gets a PLASTIC (!) treasure chest. By the way, am I the only one who for the longest time thought that the word said by the background voice when Mr. Krabs gets the plastic treasure chest was LUCKY instead of PLASTIC? Anyone? Ah well, moving on…

ROCK BOTTOM

A whole lot of trial and error occurs in this classic episode, where SpongeBob and Patrick end up taking the wrong bus and wind up in the deeper part of the ocean in a place called ‘Rock Bottom’. Patrick ends up getting a bus back but SpongeBob is unable to get the same bus so the whole episode is about him trying to get back home but a lot of his attempts end up backfiring. Like in one scene, he goes to get a candy bar from a nearby vending machine but the bus comes and leaves just as he is pulling it out from the machine; there’s even some really funny imagery where we see the bus basically ‘taunting’ SpongeBob as it keeps going back and forth in place whenever he goes to reach for the candy bar… and then to top it all off, some random fish ends up taking the candy bar because SpongeBob didn’t grab it when he tried to get to the bus. This episode also really does a good job at establishing a fairly creepy atmosphere in Rock Bottom, which makes sense seeing how it’s a location that is deeper down in the ocean.

SOMETHING SMELLS

Ah, here’s another classic one (and yes, I know I’ve been saying that a lot during this list, but again, that just shows how great of a show this is). One day, SpongeBob decides to make an ice cream sundae but finds that he doesn’t have any of the proper ingredients. So, instead he makes a sundae out of ketchup, onions, and a moldy peanut plant, which as you may have guessed, results in him having extremely bad breath. So whenever he tries to talk to somebody, they end up running away from him. It’s so bad that not only does the mail-fish actually break apart to reveal two other fish under him but even a building flees as a result of SpongeBob’s breath. Patrick tries to help cheer him up and also ends up having some of SpongeBob’s ‘special sundae’ as well. This episode also has some truly iconic moments in it, including the one fish that makes quite the disgusted face (DEUUEAUGH!), which was so popular that it’s been translated into other languages, and Patrick’s classic story about an ugly barnacle that was so ugly, everyone died; The End! (J)

DYING FOR PIE

You know sometimes you just got to wonder where some of the scenarios of these episodes come from. Like in this one, for example, Squidward buys a pie for SpongeBob in honor of Employee Brotherhood Day. However, it turns out that these pies are actually bombs from a bomb factory… they’re bombs!! When SpongeBob apparently eats the ‘pie bomb’, Squidward, feeling bad for being responsible for SpongeBob’s seemingly inevitable death, seeks to keep SpongeBob happy in his final hours. Seriously, that’s the plot of this episode, folks. Quite a weird and disturbing premise, but still very funny if only because of how strange it is. It gets even better after the reveal where SpongeBob tells Squidward that he actually didn’t have any of that ‘pie bomb’ and they accidentally cause a massive explosion when they drop it. Like I said, this was a fairly weird episode.

SQUIDVILLE

In this episode, Squidward is unable to deal with SpongeBob and Patrick’s antics anymore so he moves away to a private community exclusively for octopuses, the titular Squidville, where everyone looks, talks, and acts the same. They even have the same houses modeled from an Easter Island head. This episode is a great satire on the concept of an idyllic community where everything’s the same and we get to see that although Squidward initially enjoys his new place of residence, we do see that he does get bored by it all after spending an unclear amount of time there (apparently about two weeks, to be precise, from what I’ve read online).

NO FREE RIDES

Another common running gag revolves around SpongeBob’s numerous attempts to pass his boating exam but ultimately failing it every time he takes it. In this episode, after SpongeBob yet again fails the test, with this one just so happening to be the last one for the entire school year, Mrs. Puff, not wanting to have to deal with him again for another year, uses her ‘ace in the hole’, extra credit, so that SpongeBob can pass. But then after passing him, she then realizes the trouble that she’s about to cause as a result of letting SpongeBob drive so she then tries to steal his new car while he tries to get it back. My favorite part of this episode is easily when SpongeBob is hanging onto the car and is dragged through a whole bunch of obstacles, including Giant Clams, Cheese Graters, and worst of all, educational television. Now without further ado, here’s SpongeBob’s hypnotic stare.

FRANKENDOODLE

This episode revolves around the shenanigans that ensue when SpongeBob and Patrick come across a big pencil that fell from the sky which, in reality, was due to an artist at sea up on the surface accidentally dropping the pencil in the water, which results in him learning (the hard way) about the two biggest rules of being an artist at sea; always bring spare pencils and, later on once he gets the pencil back, a pencil sharpener. Anyway, SpongeBob and Patrick discover that this pencil actually has the ‘power’ to make all of their drawings real but when they draw a cartoon version of SpongeBob, this ‘doodle’ doppelganger starts to wreak havoc. I have to admit, this episode can be a little creepy at times as a result of its premise in which drawings come to life and how one of them ends up turning evil and tries to literally ‘erase’ SpongeBob from existence. It’s kind of a ‘horror’ story when you start to think about it, which does make sense considering that the title of the episode is a play on the classic monster story/movie, ‘Frankenstein’.

BAND GEEKS

And now we come to what is commonly regarded by many as the best episode of the entire series and I’m not going to lie… I think that I very much do agree with that statement. It’s truly an all-time classic, not just as an episode of the series but as one of the best episodes of any animated show ever. In this episode, Squidward tries to set up a band when his rival Squilliam asks him to be a substitute for his own band at an upcoming event, the Bubble Bowl, which it turns out is actually a real-life football game with the sea creatures appearing in a dome in the middle of the field at halftime. Squidward gathers together all of the people of Bikini Bottom to be in the band and, as you might have guessed, hilarity ensues. This episode is full of classic moments, from Patrick asking Squidward if mayonnaise and horseradish are instruments to Plankton running back and forth to play a harmonica to a pair of flag twirlers being told to spin so fast that they actually end up flying into the air and crashing into a blimp. And then of course you have the epic finale where Squidward, thinking that the band is going to suck given all that has happened during their practices, is shocked to see them perform so well with the song ‘Sweet Victory’. And that folks is why ‘Band Geeks’ is easily the all-time greatest episode of ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’.

For your viewing and listening pleasure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANk8xlsp1pQ

GRAVEYARD SHIFT

Like ‘Rock Bottom’, ‘Graveyard Shift’ also does a great job at establishing a fairly unsettling atmosphere. After a customer comes to the Krusty Krab right after it closes for the night, Mr. Krabs decides to have the Krusty Krab be open for 24 hours a day, leaving SpongeBob and Squidward forced to stick around to serve customers. At one point during the night, Squidward decides to pull a prank on SpongeBob by telling him a story about an old employee who accidentally cut off his own hand while at work, replaced it with a spatula, and then got run over by a bus. Now, as a ghost, this ‘Hash-Slinging Slasher’ returns to the Krusty Krab every Tuesday night (for the record, this takes place on a Tuesday night so Squidward just used that night for his story) to enact his vengeance upon the place. And although Squidward was just making it all up, things start to happen that make it seem like the Slasher is indeed coming. I won’t spoil anything that happens in the finale but there’s some funny twists that occur revealing what’s really going on, including a nice little reference to one of the most famous classic films of all time, which I won’t name here.

SAILOR MOUTH

Yes folks, they made an episode of ‘SpongeBob’ that was entirely based around swearing. Again, sometimes our favorite shows from our childhoods can really stretch the boundaries of what can be shown on shows aimed towards kids. In this episode, SpongeBob comes across a word that he doesn’t know and when he says it, the word in question gets censored by a dolphin noise. When he asks Patrick about it, he tells him that it’s what’s known as a ‘sentence enhancer’ but after they start using it in front of everybody (including some who really shouldn’t be hearing it), Mr. Krabs tells them that it’s not okay to say that word, which is one of 13 bad words that should never be used. So ultimately this whole episode consists of the main characters frequently getting into instances where they end up swearing. There’s a scene where Mr. Krabs goes on a big expletive-laced rant after injuring his foot where he uses all 13 of the bad words. Apparently in the scene where SpongeBob swears after losing a board game, he was originally supposed to tell Patrick to go **** himself. Damn! I can see why this episode was so controversial and yet it’s still so hilarious to see these characters get into a situation that you would absolutely never see in a kids show these days.

PROCRASTINATION

Admit it folks, we can all relate to what happens to SpongeBob in this episode. We’ve all experienced a moment in our lives where we found ourselves constantly getting distracted when we were supposed to be working on a big project. In the case of SpongeBob, it’s an 800-word essay for boating school on what not to do at a stoplight that is due the very next day. Again, it’s an effective situation for the plot of an episode as we see SpongeBob constantly finding himself stuck with what can definitely be seen as a serious case of writer’s block (as a film critic, I can definitely relate) while trying to write his paper so he ends up doing other things instead, like feeding Gary and calling Patrick in the middle of the night, for example. But easily my favorite moment during this episode is when it looks like he’s finally getting a lot of the essay done through a montage but at the end of it when he finally looks over what he’s written so far, we see that all he actually did was just write the word ‘the’ in a fancy style of font. It’s a great collection of funny moments capped off by an incredibly hilarious payoff that of course I won’t dare reveal to anyone who hasn’t seen the episode yet. Needless to say, if you have seen it, then you know what I’m talking about.

On another note, this episode is also notable because it had a couple scenes cut out of it in recent years, three to be precise. But only one of these scenes makes sense as to why it was cut. It’s a scene where SpongeBob is dreaming about getting his driver’s license as we then cut to a car crashing. Obviously, there’s a good reason behind this cut as obviously Nick didn’t want kids doing that exact same thing. But then there’s another scene cut where SpongeBob looks outside to see everyone having fun. Apparently this scene was cut because in it, Patrick is putting lotion on Sandy’s back and it was thought that he was unhooking her bra. But seriously, if you watch the scene, there really isn’t any indication that this is happening at all. Another scene that was cut is when SpongeBob does some calisthenics (even his nose and eyelashes do some working out as well). At the time I am writing this, there is no official reason as to why this scene was cut from the episode and now, just like what happened with ‘The Muppet Christmas Carol’ when the song ‘When Love is Gone’ was cut, there’s a clearly obvious jarring edit that occurs in current airings of the episode as a result of this cut. Ah well, despite all of this, ‘Procrastination’ is still another fun episode of the series that I’m certain all of us can relate to in some way given the circumstances.

JUST ONE BITE

And here’s yet another classic episode that, like ‘Procrastination’, also notably had a scene cut from it. The episode revolves around Squidward, who declares that he doesn’t like Krabby Patties and that he’s never had one and he never will. SpongeBob tries to convince him otherwise but Squidward isn’t having any of SpongeBob’s nonsense… that is, until it’s shown that he really does like Krabby Patties, resulting in him trying to have another one without anybody knowing about it, especially SpongeBob. You want to talk about surreal moments, folks? How about the scene in this episode where Squidward fantasizes about falling in love with a big Krabby Patty, having a kid with it (…don’t look at me, that’s literally what happens in this episode), growing old together, and finally dying. If I haven’t mentioned it already, there are quite a lot of weird things that happen in this show, especially whenever the camera zooms in on someone’s face, resulting in the animation becoming far more detailed and also fairly disturbing. And there’s no better example of this than in this episode when Squidward assures SpongeBob that he doesn’t like Krabby Patties.

Does this face look unsure to you?

Like I said earlier, this episode also had a moment that was cut out following initial airings. In this case, it’s the scene where Squidward sneaks into the Krusty Krab at night when no one’s around. In the original version of the episode, he stops himself from entering the Krusty Krab as he realizes that he’s bound to set off some kind of security. He then notices that this ‘security’ is apparently nothing more than a bucket of water so because he thinks it’s harmless, he then proceeds to tip it over. But then finally he realizes that it isn’t water and is actually gas. A lit match is dropped and he ends up catching on fire … twice. Yeah, as soon as the first explosion is over, another bucket of gas is dropped and another explosion occurs before Squidward finally comes across the Krabby Patty Vault. From what I’ve read online, there isn’t an official reason as to why this scene was cut but it seems like it primarily because this episode came out fairly shortly after 9/11, when the media looked to censor anything that could be viewed resembling terrorism and violence… though if you ask me, I don’t really see how this scene has that much in common with anything of that nature. It’s just a case of the Krusty Krab having an extremely excessive form of security that Squidward ends up getting caught by.

Then again, we are talking about a scene where Squidward ends up right in the middle of two explosions so I do understand why Nick decided to have the scene cut out following the events of 9/11. But with that in mind, I also want to note that some of the more recent episodes of the show haven’t gotten the same treatment despite the fact that they feature far more gruesome moments, like in ‘House Fancy’ when Squidward’s toenail gets ripped out or in ‘Pineapple Fever’ where his eyebrow gets ripped out. Yes folks, these gruesome scenes (commonly referred to as being part of a recent trend of the series known as ‘Squidward Torture Porn’) have yet to be removed and yet the scene in this episode, which is 100% tame by comparison, is the one that got cut. Words cannot even begin to describe how ridiculously stupid of a situation this is. Thankfully, unlike the calisthenics scene from ‘Procrastination’, this cut doesn’t result in a jarring edit; it just zooms into the shot of the Krabby Patty vault. Still, I think this episode is even better when the deleted scene, which is actually pretty dang funny, unlike those aforementioned gruesome moments. I do remember a time, folks, when the unedited version of this episode ran on TV. Those were the days… back when this show was actually good.

DOING TIME

Now this was a mindf*** of an episode, which starts after SpongeBob yet again causes a lot of destruction and mayhem during one of his boating tests but this time, as a result, Mrs. Puff gets arrested. But when she gets to prison, she realizes that she’s much better off there because she doesn’t have to deal with SpongeBob anymore. But because SpongeBob feels guilty about letting this happen, he and Patrick try to break her out. What makes this episode so memorable is the fact that as the episode go on, we see that this was all just in Mrs. Puff’s head as she starts to go crazy as a result of SpongeBob and Patrick trying to break her out, sort of a dream within a dream if you will (insert ‘Inception’ joke here). The first two times SpongeBob and Patrick try to break her out, they disguise themselves as rocks and then they hide in the kitchen’s chili and when Mrs. Puff brings over the guards, they think she’s just talking to inanimate objects. Ultimately it gets to the point where she’s put into solitary confinement (after literally ripping two guards’ faces off because just a few moments earlier, SpongeBob and Patrick walked by in guard uniforms) and after hallucinating that her room is made out of SpongeBob she starts flashing back to the incident that landed her in jail in the first place but this time to different results; in one version, SpongeBob gets arrested and in another she’s driving with a fellow inmate named Donna, who’s voiced by none other than Biff from ‘Back to the Future’, Thomas Wilson, who has done other roles in the series including Flatts the Flounder and the Tattletale Strangler (“So what’s for dinner tonight, Puff Mama… Chili?”). All in all, this is a crazy episode but an episode that’s full of laughs as well.

ROCK-A-BYE BIVALVE

SpongeBob and Patrick take care of a baby scallop, effectively becoming its mother and father… Boom, instant comedic gold. There are a lot of memorable moments in this episode, from when Patrick realizes that he can’t be the mother because he doesn’t wear a shirt (resulting in a fairly gross image that we really didn’t need to see but is still a hilarious moment nevertheless) to the montage of scenes where Patrick keeps coming home from ‘work’ and is too tired to take care of the baby, leaving SpongeBob to have to do all the work (I especially love the one ‘time card’, a common gag in the series which in this episode has been focused around Patrick’s claims of when he’ll take care of the baby, that just goes ‘Uhh….’). And whenever Patrick comes home, he just goes into the living room to watch TV show, specifically a show where some guy gets hit in the head with a coconut. I put ‘work’ in quotations because, well, for anyone who hasn’t seen the episode, I won’t spoil it because it’s such a funny reveal of what Patrick claims to be his ‘work’. Not only that but the episode even ends on probably one of the best final lines in the entire series when, after the baby scallop finally heads out on its own, Patrick tells SpongeBob that they ‘should have another one’.

WET PAINTERS

We got a classic pair of episodes coming up, the first being ‘Wet Painters’, in which SpongeBob and Patrick get put to work repainting Mr. Krabs’ house and all seems to go well until they get paint (which they are told is permanent, by the way) on the first dollar that Mr. Krabs ever earned and to make matters worse, Mr. Krabs warned them that if they got any paint on his valuable possessions, then he would have their rear ends cut off and mounted over his fireplace (DAMN… that’s dark and the episode even cuts to a scene where their rear ends are cut off and hung over the fireplace… GEEZ!). Anyway, despite that incredibly dark threat, the episode is full of hilarious moments as SpongeBob and Patrick try to get the paint off of the dollar, from putting it in a washing machine to just smashing it with a computer (the latter scenario is made even more funny due to the line before it where Patrick tells SpongeBob that ‘they’re not cavemen’ and that ‘they have technology’… which he then uses to smash the dollar. And this episode also has a great ending where, without giving anything major away, it’s shown that this whole conflict was ultimately…

KRUSTY KRAB TRAINING VIDEO

Easily one of the Top 10 greatest episodes of the series; the title says it all, this is a ‘training video’ for new employees at the Krusty Krab. There isn’t any plot in this episode, it’s just a series of scenes highlighting every aspect of work at the Krusty Krab, from hygiene practices to keeping Plankton from stealing the Krabby Patty formula. Memorable moments include the key phrase ‘People Order Our Patties’ (which, if you haven’t figured it out by now, is ‘P.O.O.P.’ for short) and the numerous times where SpongeBob asks the narrator if he could learn how to make a Krabby Patty… and oh yeah, let’s talk about that pivotal moment where SpongeBob finally gets to learn the secret Krabby Patty formula. After all of this buildup… the episode cuts out just as the narrator starts to tell SpongeBob the formula. Like pretty much everyone who watched this episode, I first thought that the cable cut out early but then I realized it was intentional and while I’ll admit that for a time I was kind of pissed at this episode for doing this, nowadays I just love how ballsy of an ending this is once again keeping the formula secret.

CHOCOLATE WITH NUTS

Yet another classic episode with a simple but hilarious premise; SpongeBob and Patrick become Chocolate salesmen so that they can be rich and act fancy. But for the most part, they don’t have much luck. One customer starts chasing them around town yelling ‘CHOCOLATE!!’ (who has a great final moment to his ‘episode arc’ when he finally catches up to SpongeBob and Patrick), and another fish consistently scams them out of their money by giving them candy storing bags, storing bags to store the candy storing bags, and then just pretending to be seriously injured. And then after a while SpongeBob and Patrick decide to just lie and say that their chocolate will do great things, like make someone fall in love or letting someone rule the world. In short, this is another episode full of hilarious and unforgettable moments that come as a result of the spot-on writing for this episode. Also…

Probably my Favorite Moment of the whole Series

I HAD AN ACCIDENT

This takes the cake for being the absolute weirdest episode of the entire series. It starts with SpongeBob getting into an accident while sand skiing that results in him literally breaking his butt. He’s warned by the doctor that another incident like that would result in him being placed into the machine known as the ‘Iron Butt’, the buttocks equivalent of an Iron Lung. So this results in SpongeBob deciding to stay indoors from here on out, leading Patrick and Sandy to try and get him to come outside. A pretty simple episode for the most part, until the very end. Patrick and Sandy try to fool SpongeBob by having Patrick pretend to be an ape and ‘attack’ Sandy but then when a second Patrick enters the scene, it’s revealed to be a real live-action gorilla (Well technically speaking, it’s just a guy in a suit but that’s beside the point) who begins to attack Sandy and Patrick. SpongeBob finally comes out ready to face his fears but then he too gets captured by the gorilla. And then, when SpongeBob brings up the elephant in the room in regards to the fact that there’s a gorilla underwater, the gorilla then starts talking, yells to his friend George (who’s in a Zebra costume) that ‘they’re onto us’, and then the two of them ride off into the sunset. We then cut to a live-action family watching the episode obviously confused by what they just saw as the father then turns the TV off, ending the episode. I mean, this ending comes straight out of nowhere, results in some odd imagery, namely a scene where a live-action gorilla and zebra (again in suits, but we’ll ignore that) ride off into the sunset, and offers no explanation as to what the hell just happened. And that’s why this episode is so great, because it just rolls with it.

So those are my Top 25 (though in no particular order) favorite episodes of ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’. Of course, as I noted earlier, some episodes didn’t end up missing the cut so feel free to list your own favorites in the comment section below.

Stay tuned for a review of ‘The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie’, which will be posted in the next few days.