Teen Titans Go! To The Movies (Dir. Peter Rida Michail & Aaron Horvath, 1 h 28 m)

Despite DC's live action cinematic outings over the past 20 years being anything from "revitalising the entire superhero genre", in the case of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy to "painfully, eyewateringly bad, ridiculous beyond all measure, an affront to cinema itself" (anything from Suicide Squad to Batman and Robin to Batman v Superman), the fact remains that on the big and small screen, DC have tended to produce animated works of uniformly high quality, whether hand drawn, computer generated, or computer generated to look like stop-start animated Lego.

And then you have Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, based upon the show Teen Titans Go!-a show I've never previously seen, except for rather critical Internet based reviews of the show that deride it for a) its humour, which ranges from self-referential to what I can only describe as "playground humour", complete with fart and toilet jokes, b) its lack of gravitas, its undermining of beloved characters, and "random" tone, and c) because it's not the original, critically acclaimed series. Thus, you can understand my mild in trepidation. That, and it's a PG-rated kids film, released during the summer holidays that i half expected to be full to the rafters with squalling, bored kids and confused parents.

And...I was wrong. Partially. Yes, the humour is juvenile, the film has multiple utterly bizarre song and dance routines (though, to be fair, I now have the Teen Titans' theme stuck in my head, so they're damn well written songs), and occasionally the film drops into millennial internet silliness, complete with Major League Gaming airhorns, snapchattery, teenagerisms, and so on. Yet, TTG! sells each and every ridiculous moment with charm-I mean, fuck, this film has Nicholas Cage as Superman (at long last!), not one but two Stan Lee cameos (voiced by the man himself, sending up his own ubiquitous cameos in the Marvel Cinematic Universe), an entire music video riffing off 1980s music videos, complete with Michael Bolton as a singing tiger, who the Titans then run over, and so on. There are too many well-written gags, references, and injokes to count, let alone list, in this film.

And surprising to say, but this film reminded me of another irreverent, pop-culture-focused, scatological superhero above all-Deadpool. Yup, the fact that Slade Wilson (alias Deathstroke, voiced by Will Arnett), a merciless assassin who uses MIND MANIPULATION to best his foes, is the chief villain, doesn't seem to have been just by chance-at several points, even the Titans get confused. What TTG! is, at least from this hour and a bit feature length adventure, is Deadpool for kids. With a bigger team.

Certainly, this film's plot has the meta-angle down pat, with the Titans, led by Robin (Scott Menville), travelling to Hollywood to become real superheroes and star in that ultimate badge of honour, their own film. Here, we not only get the customary riffing on the DCCU, complete with what seems to be the obligatory "Martha!" joke (needless to say, there's shared ground here with Warner Bros Animation's The Lego Batman Movie), but TTG! cocks a merry snook at the canon-mining desperation of both Marvel and DC's cinematic universe, as more and more obscure heroes are dragged out of the deeper recesses of nerdom to continue overwrought film series.
What follows, with the group trying to become real superheroes, as well as persevering challenges, trying, and failing to be serious, and finally learning the usual saturday morning cartoon lifelesson (something the film merrily wraps up half-delivered), may not be the most groundbreaking, nor the best entry in DC's animated canon, but it's fun. The quintet of Robin, scatterbrained, but emotional heart of the group, alien princess Starfire (Hynden Walch), half human, half demon perky/snarky goth, Raven (Tara Strong), Cyborg (Uh, a Cyborg, voiced by Khary Payton), and shapeshifting easy going Beast Boy (Greg Cipes), are a likable bunch, and their various outlooks on the world are well-developed-there's an enjoyable chemistry between the five of them, even in quieter scenes, and some of the comedic interplay between the group is razorsharp.

Slade is the funniest thing about this film, a deadpan adversary for the Titans, who he outsmarts at various tones-there's a number of great scenes where Slade verbally or mentally outmanoeuvres the entire group with ease, but in this film, of all films, his comeuppance, even when he seems victious against a divided Titans, is all but inevitable. The other superheroes are given mixed screentime-Batman (Jimmy Kimmel), the aforementioned Nic Cage Superman, and Wonder Woman (Halsey)
are all here, but, as with Lego Batman, there are a number of particularly obscure heroes (hell, I had to google the (particularly illfated) Challengers of the Unknown to check they actually exists), whilst everyone from the Mighty Atom to Jonah freaking Hex make background appearances.

Moreover, this is a film that is funny. Not in the forced way that the DCCU has been of late, with Flash making Wheedon-esque pop culture references, but properly, occasionally painfully funny, whilst playing on what we know and love about these characters, iconic and obscure. Much as the best kids films do, there's something for everyone, from fast-paced slapstick to a healthy dose of millennial humour (say what you like about the original, but this version of the Teen Titans acts like a bunch of modern teenagers) to a veritable arsenal of superhero references and gags. The animation is funny! The soundtrack is funny! It's funny! Superhero comics...are meant to be fun!

 With a live action Teen Titans on the horizon, complete with cussing Robin and the edgy grimdarkness that seems to accompany every new DC property, it seems ironic that this childrens' film seems the more realistic, the more hopeful, the more colourful. It may never take things entirely seriously, it may be uncomplicated, but there's something refreshingly heartfelt about this team, and about this movie.




Rating: Recommended.