Plankton: The Movie (2025)

It is an absolutely thankless task attempting to review a film set in the SpongeBob SquarePants universe. But here we go, nevertheless. It's almost a surprise it's taken this long to have a Plankton based spin-off; last year saw the release of Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie, so I suppose now is the right time to give SpongeBob's nemesis his own film, making it the fifth film set in the SpongeBob universe. For those that may be unsettled by back to back films in the franchise without SpongeBob's name in the title, fear not- The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants is due for release in December. Plankton: The Movie is a sort of origin story for Plankton's longtime spouse Karen (a sentient computer, invented by Plankton) where we learn how they came to be together through Plankton being hypnotized by SpongeBob as a therapist. The reason for this is that Karen removes her 'empathy' chip from her hard drive, sick to death of the way Plankton treats her and essentially goes on a rampage; destroying Bikini Bottom and forcing Plankton to team up with SpongeBob to figure out why this has all happened and more importantly, get things back to normal. There's not enough screen time for our favourite characters; Patrick, Gary, Sandy and Mr Krabs all feature sparingly, but the real gaping hole is left by Squidward, long suffering colleague of SpongeBob. His weary irritation, so frequently hilarious in the television series is noticable by its absense for the majority of the film. This is perhaps an unfair criticism considering it's Plankton: The Movie and we'll inevitably get a Squidward spin-off film at some point. And as I say, it's almost a waste of time trying to give a critical analysis of it. But there's still so much to enjoy and laugh at, mainly the utter lunacy of every single thing going on in front of you. None of it makes any sense of course, but the admiration and respect you feel for the writing remains completely intact. This series has become an absolute staple of kid's television and it's madness, in a good way. The only sort of comparison I could make would be with the Belgian/French series A Town Called Panic, which spawned the 2009 spin-off film that remains one of the all time great animated comedy films. This isn't close to the heights of A Town Called Panic, but the sheer amount of output with a solidly consistant quality is truly impressive. 6.7/10