After over 10 years of waiting and dwindling interest, the second SpongeBob SquarePants film, “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water”, finally arrives in theaters. Was it worth the wait?

Not really. “Sponge Out of Water” is actually a complete structural train-wreck with few redeeming factors. It takes a plot that could work as a 30-minute television special and stretches it out to 93 minutes with obnoxious padding and random scenes with absolutely no consequence to the overall plot.

Here’s the idea: while Plankton (one of the villains of the television show) is stealing the secret formula for the Krabby Patty, a favorite food of the residents of SpongeBob’s hometown, the formula magically disappears. SpongeBob has to prove Plankton’s innocence by teaming up with him while the city is falling apart due to the extreme need for Krabby Patties. The story is told by Burger Beard, a pirate played by Antonio Banderas, who’s the actual thief and plans on selling Krabby Patties to humans.

While this plot would loan itself decently well to an extended episode of the show, as a 93-minute film, it simply doesn’t work.There are many pointless subplots and sequences added to the story in order to increase the length. In one pointless sequence, Plankton enters SpongeBob’s mind which leads nowhere. There’s also a sequence where SpongeBob and Plankton meet a mystical dolphin who oversees the cosmos, and this extensive sequence only happens so that later, when the dolphin reappears, he can give the characters a power that they could have easily gained through other means (which I’ll describe shortly). There’s a very pointless musical number that seems like a cheap knock-off of the classic SpongeBob song, “F.U.N.” There’s even a scene where a dinosaur appears for absolutely no reason and contributes nothing to the rest of the story.

Despite those examples, they almost seem harmless in comparison to the film’s biggest waste of the time: the time-travel plotline. SpongeBob and Plankton have to travel back in time to stop the secret formula of the Krabby Patty from vanishing, but they grab a duplicate (placed by Plankton at the beginning) accidentally, rendering the entire subplot pointless. They don’t go back to fix their mistakes, so I question why that entire section of the film even mattered. It didn’t add any character development. It didn’t contribute any funny moments. It literally just happened to increase the length of the film.

There are also huge gaps of logic in the story. Using a page from a magic book, SpongeBob turns himself and his friends into superheroes, but is still surprised by the appearance of Plankton and Sandy for some reason. The mystical dolphin from earlier in the film grants the characters the ability to breathe on land, despite the fact that they could’ve used the page from the magic book to do this, and that would eliminate the usefulness of the dolphin (who was only in the film to pad the runtime). Why didn’t SpongeBob just use the magic page to bring the secret formula back to Bikini Bottom instead of becoming a superhero? Why didn’t Plankton steal the Krabby Patty formula when he finally had it in his grasp?

So, “Sponge Out of Water” is pretty much a disaster, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a well-made disaster. The traditional animation (which is a lot more prominent than the trailers for the film would suggest) looks better than ever. You can see paintbrush strokes all over the background, making the whole thing feel like a lot of care was put into it. The sequences in the real world look quite nice, with lots of detail put into each character model (even if their superhero forms, except for Sandy, looks terrible).

If you go see this, don’t see it in 3D. It’s one of the worst conversions I’ve ever seen, and the animators’ obsession with animating dust-particles completely threw off my depth-perception and gave me a horrible headache. The 3D conversion doesn’t do justice to the beautiful animation.

The music presented here is also quite excellent. While all of the original songs written for the film are really bad, the score is surprisingly amazing. It features lots of traditional SpongeBob tunes, some new tunes that fit the world beautifully. There are also some themes in the film that are surprisingly epic and match a scope that this film never came close to reaching.

The acting in the film is another thing that “Sponge Out of Water” does right. The voice acting is just as good as it’s been since the show started. If you don’t like anyone from the show, you’re not going to like them here. The real star of the show here is Antonio Banderas, who pulls off the cartoony villain, Burger Beard, with a surprising level of dedication. His performance kept me entertained, but it didn’t save the film.

Is “Sponge Out of Water” the worst animated film since “Penguins of Madagascar?” No, few things are that bad, but it still manages to prove (with its success at the box-office) that studios are more concerned with selling animated films to gullible children rather than making good films that happen to be animated. Did you notice that all of the trailers featured almost nothing but the superhero forms of the characters (which were shown so much that the trailers almost feel like false advertising)? That’s because Paramount was more concerned with the marketing than they were with the film itself. News flash, Paramount: people will go see a new SpongeBob film even if there’s no silly gimmick attached to it. You don’t need to advertise a new Smurfs film with SpongeBob characters in order to make something successful.

In preparation for “Sponge Out of Water”, I watched the first film again and it holds up surprisingly well, telling a decent story and containing several good laughs. The difference between the first and second film is that one wanted to tell a good story that anyone could enjoy, but this film is made for kids exclusively, neglecting to tell an interesting story in favor of being just another kids’ film. Don’t watch “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water”. It’s not the SpongeBob you remember and it’s just not good.