**** outta *****

4 outta 5

Teen Titans Go! To the Movies is a really funny, incredibly strange, superhero movie. It’s basically over-caffeinated caricatures of the DC heroes which is legit hilarious. And the deep cut DC references are bountiful. The Challengers of the Unknown are in it! Heck, this easily passes Avengers: Infinity War for sheer number of superheroes in one movie. It may be a bit wearying but it’s so enjoyably nuts that it wins the audience over due to sheer maniac energy.

A continuation of the Teen Titans Go! TV series (which itself was a spin-off of the Teen Titans animatedTV series), Teen Titans Go! to the Movies follows the Teen Titans: Robin (Scott Menville), Beast Boy (Greg Cipes), Cyborg (Khary Payton), Raven (Tara Strong) and Starfire (Hynden Walch). They want to be taken seriously by other superheroes like the Justice League but the Titans spend a lot of time goofing off.  At the movie premiere of the latest Batman film (titled Batman Again, great gag), Robin gets depressed he’s never going to get his own film.  So the Titans go to the movie director, Jade Wilson (Kristen Bell) who tells them they need an arch-nemesis to battle. Coincidentally, the Teen Titans run into Slade (Will Arnett) who wants to steal a precious jewel that he calls “The perfect plot device” to enact his evil plan and only they can stop him.

As the first episode of Teen Titans Go! is literally about them trying to get sandwiches and pies, this film is wider in scope than the TV series. One story in Teen Titans Go! to the Movies is sort a sideways adaptation of the popular Teen Titans Judas Contract comic book story where Slade tried to break the group from within using an interloper. But that’s just one plot in a movie that gleefully careens from one storyline to the next. Even Stan Lee crosses the street from Marvel for a cameo in a DC flick. It’s pretty hilarious as Stan says “I don’t care if it’s DC!  I love cameos!”  This movie is all at once a superhero movie parody, a story about a kid learning that he doesn’t need to be famous to be happy, an action movie, a musical, and also a brief foray into time travel.

The whole time travel bit is amazing.  There’s a great usage of the Back to the Future music and Raven even asks “Where are we going to find Lybian terrorists to sell us Plutonium at this hour?” The crew fudges with the origins of the prominent DC Superheroes, the funniest being how they dispose of young Aquaman simply due to littering. The punchline is great when they return to the present and villains are running amok and Robin asks “Do they still make superhero movies?” and, when they see a movie theatre blow up, Raven bluntly responds  “No movies. Only suffering.” 

There are maybe a bit too many musical numbers in here but there’s some gold like  “Upbeat Inspirational Song About Life” that takes a darkly comic turn at the end. The script is very quick witted and has gags for kids and adults. There’s even a grand scheme involving a nefarious superhero  video streaming service which is pretty subversively funny since Warner Brothers and DC are about to launch their own superhero streaming video service this year. A few times this movie slows down for emotion but usually it gleefully undercuts its own emotional message mere seconds later.

The voice cast is all very energetic and it’s pretty infectious.  As the movie itself states, it’s probably the closest DC will ever get to releasing a Robin-centric film so it’s fun to see him take centre stage here.  Instead of Batman’s steadfast sidekick, he’s more of a frustrated figurehead of the Titans who tries to get them to listen to him and Menville’s outsized reactions are great. Each of the Titans have their own unique quirk, like the way that Starfire awkwardly phrases sentences is continually hilarious as she always throws the word “the” in front of places it doesn’t belong.  Beast Boy and Cyborg are great for random asides of weirdness, some of Payton’s hollering as Cyborg deliver huge laughs, and Strong’s  Raven is the low-key sarcastic quipping one.  The design of the characters all look really basic but there’s a lot of different emotions conveyed;  Raven is basically just a pair of eyes floating on a cloak but there are a lot of subtleties.  Bell’s Jade is a loud, flashy character and Bell makes her funny.  As Slade, Arnett is hectic as he swings from emotional extremes in seconds and Arnett plays it to the hilt.

Teen Titans Go! To the Movies is both a celebration of the insanely deep roster of DC superhero characters and also a parody.  It manages to capture the spirit of the characters and also twist it around. This is a Looney Tunes take on the DC heroes, sort of Teen Titans by way of the Road Runner. It is at both at times heartfelt and gleefully full of cartoon violence. If anything, it a very strange superhero movie in a genre that can use a good tweaking.