I never thought that I would say these words, but SpongeBob’s second movie, “Sponge Out of Water,” is actually pretty good.

It doesn’t try to reinvent SpongeBob by trying to make him edgy or important but rather stays true to the bizarre essence of the show. I was immediately turned off by the animation style in the trailer, but it turns out that only makes up about a quarter of the movie, so don’t fret if that bothered you. That being said, if you didn’t like the show growing up, this movie most definitely won’t win you over to fandom. But if you grew up watching it every day like me, there is plenty to enjoy in this trippy, zany, hilarious, downright ridiculous movie.

For the sake of transparency, it should be noted that I have never done hallucinogenic drugs. However, after seeing “Sponge,” I’m fairly certain that I have a solid grasp of the experience. They somehow managed to amp up the nonsensicality of the show for the movie, only adding to its fun factor. Questions like “Did I just see that right?” and “What on Earth?” filled the theater every few minutes or so as they would move on to the next hilarious, inexplicable tactic. In the land of the squidasaurus rex, an omnipotent dolphin and a photo booth time machine, abandon all logic ye who enter here.

I’m not even going to begin to try to explain this story to you; just know that it the plot is no more complicated than any individual episode of the show would be. The movie is extremely self-aware. They know that they aren’t making a movie for Academy attention, so they simply threw thousands of jokes at us hoping some would stick. Fortunately, this movie actually manages to be funny, with the majority of the jokes making me at least crack a smile. The frequently dumb but also witty humor that we all know and love from the show is here in full force, full of clever puns and movie references for the cinephile such as “The A-Team” and “The Avengers,” to name a few.

My two gripes about “Sponge” go hand in hand. First off, the target audience of this movie is very young children who still watch the show every day. That is not to say that adults or teenagers can’t have fun with it, but certain things become tedious. There were times when I was rolling my eyes at how evidently they tried to lay certain things out, especially with the point they were trying to make with the movie. I understand that teamwork is an honorable thing to teach kids, but that doesn’t mean you have to use that word in your script so abundantly that you can’t go even a few minutes without saying it. Additionally, and this could be because of my age, a song they tried to sing toward the beginning had me bored out of my mind for a few minutes. Not that it was necessarily bad, but it was just obviously for kids and not nearly as fun as I remember “Campfire Song” or “Goofy Goober” being.

Overall, I was astounded that I enjoyed this movie. As someone who grew up watching “SpongeBob,” I loved how the film never strayed far from the heart of the show. It was full of secondary characters that I recognized from episodes that I hadn’t seen in probably ten years, so it had a very nostalgic appeal. Despite the juvenile target audience and the wearisome excess of the word “teamwork,” “Sponge Out of Water” manages to be thoroughly entertaining, comical and absurd journey back into the world of Bikini Bottom to visit our favorite yellow, spongy friend. Also, if you do end up seeing this movie, stick around until the very end, because the last two minutes might just be the highlight.

_Pass the Popcorn if:_ You grew up watching “SpongeBob.” You still watch “SpongeBob.” You love puns and/or trippy movies. You saw “The Loft” and need some wholesome, mindless laughter in your life.
_Pass it Up if:_ You can’t stand “SpongeBob.” You prefer for there to be at least some logic in movies. You know for a fact that you will hate it.