The first three SpongeBob SquarePants movies were clever with added value that wasn't available in the half-hour episodes. The SpongeBob Movie: The Search for Squarepants, in theaters Friday, is more like an extended episode but it's still cute.

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SpongeBob (voice of Tom Kenney) has grown half a clam in height, making him a Big Guy. He's finally tall enough to ride the roller coaster at Captain Booty Beard's Fun Park, an absurdly dangerous satire of theme park thrill rides.

But, despite his new height, SpongeBob is still afraid to ride it. So Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown) tells SpongeBob that he can earn a swashbuckler certificate to prove his bravery, as Krabs did in his boating career prior to opening the Krusty Krab restaurant.

SpongeBob and Patrick Star's (Bill Fagerbakke) misadventures lead them through the Krusty Krab vents to discover the cursed ship of the Flying Dutchman (Mark Hamill). Only an innocent soul can free the ghost ship and its crew from the curse, and Dutchman thinks he's found his ticket in SpongeBob.

This isn't the first pirate adventure in the 26-year history of SpongeBob, but the cursed ghost ship harkens back to the live-action Pirates of the Caribbean movies. It includes some fun SpongeBob-worthy jokes like Davy Jones' literal locker, and a nice homage to late creator Stephen Hillenburg.

The adventure follows cartoon logic, where SpongeBob and Patrick can squeeze and squish. They make puns like "We can't lose in a Winnebago."

Meta commentaries on narrative devices point out the awkwardness of a dream sequence, and the futility of exposition. Jokes can also celebrate the childishness of pointing out "under where?" sounds like "underwear."

These are bright spots, but serve more as a distraction for the banality of the plot. SpongeBob and Patrick bumble through the challenges required to break the Dutchman curse, but it reduces the plot to "and then this happened, and then this happened."

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Dutchman and his second in command, Barb (Regina Hall), are exasperated by the joy with which Patrick and SpongeBob approach pirate quests. That is a tried and true comedy villain motivation, but again it serves more one-off jokes than satisfying character arcs.

It is innocent that SpongeBob wants to grow up so quickly because growing up is not about height or finishing quests. That lesson is summed up at the end of the movie, which is understandable in a 22-minute episode but a 90-minute movie leaves much of that territory unexplored.

Dutchman and Barb plot to drive SpongeBob and Patrick apart, a poignant message not to give up your friends for your goals, but the plot really only devotes one scene to that.

Like the first three SpongeBob movies, Search for Square Pants includes a live-action component. Beach shenanigans are very obviously superimposed on a background, intentionally for comedic effect.

Still, David Hasselhoff helping SpongeBob save the day Baywatch style in the first movie and Keanu Reeves as a wise tumbleweed in the third are tough acts to follow. The live-action players commit in layers of makeup, hair and costume, but it might be nice if the fourth movie didn't end on the beach again.

The Search for Squarepants still delivers intelligent, wholesome humor even if it is more derivative than the previous movies. The Netflix spinoffs The Sandy Cheeks Movie and Plankton: The Movie were more up to the standards of flagship SpongeBob.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.