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| | SpongeBob Squared - A longer, more conventional kiddie show. By David Edelstein |
 | | All this is amusing enough, but I kept waiting for the story to zigzag and go hurtling off into the furthest reaches of absurdity. |
 | | (One of my favorite SpongeBob cartoons, "Dying for Pie," ends with an H-bomb explosion in Bikini Bottom—substituting, no doubt, for Bikini Atoll.) The movie does get crazy, sort of, finally, but the path is pretty straight—or, as they say in the screenplay biz, linear. |
 | | King Neptune, voiced by Jeffrey Tambor, is a dull despot, imported from a more Disneyish cartoon universe, and his friendly daughter, a bespectacled mermaid named Mindy (voiced by Scarlett Johanssen), is only mildly more diverting, largely thanks to Patrick's habit of drooling and babbling, "She's hot," whenever she's in the vicinity. |
| www.slate.com /id/2109940 (1083 words) |
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