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Honestly, a title like Plankton: The Movie is about as difficult to evaluate as any movie that comes down the Hollywood pike or, in this case, washes up on its shores. Not because it’s a spin-off of SpongeBob Squarepants – or at least, not because there is anything inherently wrong with a spin-off movie of such a durably silly and enjoyable kids’ franchise – but because it often feels somewhere to the side of genuine feature-film status. In executive terms, it is more like content.
Lengthwise, Plankton does qualify as a feature, though its official runtime of nearly 90 minutes doesn’t really do justice to the fact that it runs closer to 75 when you take out the extensive end credits. Anyway, that’s not a problem; there’s a rich tradition of animated movies aimed at kids not overstaying their welcome, and Plankton himself is such a little guy.
For a tiny, amorphous blob, he’s quite accomplished, having parlayed a bit role on the long-running Nickelodeon series to a fixture as the self-appointed nemesis of SpongeBob and his beloved employer, the Krusty Krab. Like Pinky and the Brain before him, Plankton (voiced by an animator and voice actor known as Mr Lawrence) has attempted to overcome his diminutive status with somewhat obtuse world-conquering schemes, which he’s convinced can and should begin with stealing the recipe for the Krusty Krab’s Krabby Patty.
One of the best jokes of Plankton’s spin-off movie (presumably long-awaited by, at very least, Plankton himself) is that his longtime spouse Karen (Jill Talley), a sentient computer, is far better-suited to carrying out cartoonish evil plans than he is. Weary of his lack of gratitude and generally boorish manner, Karen takes matters into her own hands, becomes a multi-screened supercomputer and sets about actually dominating the world Plankton has long yearned to subjugate. This leaves Plankton, SpongeBob (Tom Kenny), and a group of gal pals led by the underwater-dwelling squirrel Sandy Cheeks (Carolyn Lawrence) to stop her – which makes Plankton: The Movie the rare children’s film to focus on the reconciliation of a childless marriage.
The loopiness of this premise is charming. Its suitability to fill out a feature film, less so. (It was originally conceived as a special before it was developed into the second tier of SpongeBob movies; the main line generally gets theatrical releases, while these spin-offs focused on the supporting cast are licensed to Netflix.)
To distinguish the movies from the long-running cartoon series, the characters are rendered in choppy modern computer animation, which is to say these days, the SpongeBob movies generally look worse than the show. (That’s one way to tell them apart, I guess!) Plankton is most enjoyable when it toys with other art styles, like a 2D psychedelic sequence after Karen’s discarded love chip is shoved into her husband’s brain, or a black-and-white musical flashback drawn in the style of 1930s shorts.
All of this potentially extraneous stuff – extensive flashbacks, musical numbers, animated experiments – are what make Plankton fun while simultaneously creating the impression that the story at hand is on the static side. Much of it consists of Plankton talking to his frenemies about his marriage. As such, it often feels more like a three-episodes-and-change filibuster than a real movie.
On one hand, this is a Netflix movie, so it’s not as if families are having $100 in ticket sales pried away from them; on the other, a streaming release makes it even more difficult to discern from TV, despite the shinier/crappier animation style. None of this can or should concern the kid audience that’s barely old enough to tell the difference anyway. But it’s hard not to wonder if sorta-movies like Plankton are training that younger audience to start thinking in terms of content, early and often.
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Plankton: The Movie is available now on Netflix
