BY JOSEPH WALTER
The opening arrived, however, and I found myself overwhelmed with a heinous cold. Not wanting to be held back from seeing the movie, I took a sip of some cold medicine in a desperate attempt at relief and headed to the theater with my Dad.
And what a strange event that was.
The cold medicine had an abnormal effect on me, and the SpongeBob movie took an odd turn, as the already-surreal content was now being amplified to a degree for which I was unprepared.
A stand-out moment for me was the musical sequence where SpongeBob and Patrick sing about becoming men while they walk through a valley infested with monstrous creatures. For the normal movie-goer, this was a light-hearted, brief musical interlude. For me, this was a sometimes-harrowing, hour-long sequence that was filled to the brim with dark humor that caused uproarious laughter to erupt from my numb mouth multiple times.
Cough syrup or no, SpongeBob's original adventure on the big screen was easily the best Nickelodeon series-to-silver-screen jump, and was an enjoyable romp all around, filled with many memorable moments, and even a heartfelt moment or two.
With hope that the second venture, "Sponge Out of Water," would measure up to the Goofy Goober-caliber first film, my Dad and I set out to see it. And, to honor the previous viewing, we snuck some flasks in to simulate the cold medicine experience. I finished mine by the third preview.
In the end, the film was good (regardless of cold medicine and/or liquor) but it didn't quite live up to expectations.
Fast forward to the present, and a third SpongeBob movie was on the horizon, "Sponge on the Run." This time, we didn't opt for cold medicine or liquor. Instead, we went for edibles.
While this probably would've worked out if we were watching the first or second films, being as high as a kite didn't quite mesh with the third one, specifically because of how dark and dire its subject matter was (or at least how dark and dire its subject matter appeared to be at the time.)
So what's the moral of this story? The first SpongeBob movie is excellent, and dramatically longer if you're hopped up on cough syrup. The second one is pretty good, especially when paired with a flask-full of alcohol. The third one, on the other hand, is okay... but no matter what method you've chosen for mind-alteration, its coupling of beloved cartoon icons with heavy subject matter will bring you down.
... well, that's only if the movie is a dark as it seemed it was at the time. Whether or not it's actually that grim is still up for debate, specifically for people when they're sober. And hey, if it turns out that it's mostly sunshine and rainbows, and that my perception was just totally warped, definitely let me know below!