SpongeBob’s Pest of the West (Nickelodeon Animation/Paramount DVD)
Picture:
C- Sound: C Extras: C Episodes: C+
Recently
it seems the SpongeBob SquarePants craze has simmered down to a quiet
hullabaloo, which means its time for marketing strategies to shift. Younger markets have moved on to the next big
thing (probably either Hannah Montana or some other new Disney Channel
creation) so the market to target now is the lingering crowd of college-age
fans who wield their own purchasing power. And this, my friends, means DVDs. Lots and lots of DVDs that will compile a few
episodes with a couple extra features and a fancy-shmancy cover; hence
Nickelodeon presents SpongeBob’s Pest of
the West. Wrapped in a shiny cover
sleeve made to look like a pair of swinging saloon doors, this DVD is centered
around a special double-length episode of the same title. Longtime fans of children’s cartoons will be
familiar with the formula, in which the writers use an extended flashback
sequence to put their regular characters in a new context, in this case: the
old west. In his usual super-innocent,
yet slightly tongue-in-cheek manner SpongeBob gently lampoons the
new-sheriff-in-town western complete with a showdown at high noon.
The disc
also has six other regular-length episodes, which have more or less nothing to
do with the old western theme, but for fans of the show that shouldn’t really
matter much. These regular-length
episodes would normally be aired in pairs in a half-hour time slot with a
commercial break in between. Fortunately
this means on the DVD that there are none of those annoying pauses that would
normally transition in and out of a block of commercials.
The
animation generally consists of two types that are neatly and creatively
interwoven. The first is the traditional
hand-drawn animation creating cartoon versions of various sea creatures. With each character a different sea-dwelling
entity, the animators take full advantage of the eccentricities of their
varying anatomies and these characters display an impressive degree of
plasticity, even for cartoons. Some of
the gags even border on grotesque with a few hyper-detailed close-ups
reminiscent of Ren & Stimpy,
reviewed elsewhere on this site. The
other type of animation used takes existing still images, cuts them into moving
parts and animates them with a computer. While this style is not used often, it does
make the visuals a bit more dynamic. Unfortunately,
the DVD transfer is such that quick movements sometimes result in a very
blocky, very apparent interlacing issue. Even without rapid movement, there are times
when outlines start to look pixilated or fuzzy. This is especially true of the super-imposed
title text. The sound is rendered in Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo with fairly
average quality. It is perhaps not as
sharp as it could be, but for a SpongeBob SquarePants DVD the demand for
technical perfection isn’t terribly high.
The
special features consist of four Pest of
the West shorts that are considerably wittier than the feature episodes
themselves, and certainly more concept driven as opposed to gag driven. There is also an Animatic of the double-length
Pest of the West, which is
essentially the original storyboards strung together into a loose animation,
with the soundtrack over top. While it
is interesting to watch for a while, to get some insight into the creation of
the cartoon, it is really not worth it to sit through the entire twenty
minutes.
While
this release has its shortcomings, for a fan it is still a solid buy. It has a total of seven episodes, which is
more than you are likely to find on most other non-full-season releases of
popular shows. But it still fits in a
tidy 75 minute running time so you can easily sit through the whole disc in one
shot. Plus for the most part, the
special features are just as entertaining and worth repeated viewings as the
episodes. And to top it all off, it
comes in a snazzy case that looks extra good on a dorm room shelf.
- Matthew Carrick
