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Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, when in November 2004 this movie was released to theaters, I did not bother to see it. At that point I had been watching SpongeBob SquarePants regularly since it began airing in 1999, and I saw the advertisements on television promoting the film, but I recall at the time not feeling motivated enough to bother to head to the theater to view it. (I suppose that I was still too young back then to fully appreciate the franchise, and I now regret having missed the opportunity.) Instead, I first watched this film at my house, on the DVD release which my mother had purchased for me, most likely sometime in late 2005 or early 2006; at the very latest, I had definitely seen it by the end of 2006.
I can remember with extreme clarity that this first time I watched the movie, when I encountered the short scene at Goofy Goober's in which Patrick receives his meal and then proceeds to complain that it's missing the included toy, whereupon the waiter immediately throws it at his face, I found it so hilarious for some reason that I rewound the DVD probably a dozen or more times to replay it, each time still managing to laugh. I also recall during my first viewing that I quickly found Dennis to be a badass, with his scene outside the Thug Tug in which he sends that muscular fish flying with only a single punch being, in my opinion, his finest moment.
I remember that not long after I first watched it on DVD, Nickelodeon began airing the movie on television. During the late 2000s and early 2010s (and probably for the rest the 2010s as well) it was shown on Nickelodeon quite frequently, and consequently I ended up viewing it many times—in fact, when I consider together all these viewings accumulated over the years, they are so numerous as to very likely make The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie my most-watched film. Many times (I remember) when I was watching television and discovered that Nickelodeon was once again airing this film, I would change the channel to Nickelodeon and watch it yet again, despite having by that point already seen it many times, because I considered it familiar, and therefore reliable, entertainment.
One unfortunate thing regarding the airings of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie on Nickelodeon which I have readily noticed is the network's omission over the years of an increasingly larger portion of the film's end credits sequence. I am still able to recall that, during the earliest showings of the movie on TV back in the late 2000s, the entire sequence was shown (as is proper), but soon the bulk of it (which begins at the 1:28 mark of the video and ends at the 7:59 mark) was first shown in split-screen manner, and then omitted entirely; afterwards the brief live-action scene of the pirates in the movie theater, included immediately after the credits (beginning at the 7:59 mark), was also cut from airings; and, finally, in my most recent viewings on TV of the film, even the introductory section of the sequence (beginning at the 0:09 mark and ending at the 1:28 mark), during which the excellent song Ocean Man
plays, was also omitted, with all the text of the end credits being shown very rapidly over the final 30 seconds or so of the movie. No doubt Nickelodeon has been doing this in order to air more advertisements, which is a great shame, because there is much fine music that plays during the end credits sequence that, due to Nickelodeon's obsession with ad revenue, will get less deserved exposure than it otherwise would have. (Those fine songs are, in order of appearance, Ocean Man
, SpongeBob & Patrick Confront the Psychic Wall of Energy
, Just a Kid
, and The Best Day Ever
.)
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This page last modified on 13 April 2021.