We’d be the first to admit that as puerile as we can be we’re not familiar with many of today’s children’s TV cartoons of which Teen Titans Go! is one of them and the film version, Teen Titans Go! To the Movies , had us a bit apprehensive about being a bunch of adults sitting in a cinema full of children getting funny looks from parents akin to those which Richard Hammond must get whenever he asks if anyone wants a lift home. But if ever a kid’s movie was written for adults then this is it.
Teen Titans Go! To the movies is like a junior Justice League with five kiddie superheroes that includes Beast Boy, Cyborg, Raven, Starfire and all led by Batman’s sidekick Robin and its him who is jealous of all the grown up heroes getting a film of their own and yet he is derided as being only a sidekick and not worthy of a standalone movie. From the opening moment, where the film riffs on the Marvel films flickering book film logo,everything comic book is up for parody. Which includes the opening scene where they take on the villainous Balloon Man (voiced by our own Greg Davies) but it’s actually the grown up superheroes who defeat him as the teen titans are too busy rapping, breaking and popping to their own rap track to notice what’s going on.
Deluded enough to believe that they defeated disaster Robin decides to get his own film but realises that his gang need a super villain which they find in the form of Slade! Not 70’s pomp stomping, glam rockers led by a gravel voiced, mirror hated, showstopping sideburned Noddy Holder but an arch enemy who’s forever being mistaken for Deadpool. The Teen Titans soon hatch a plan to prevent the grown up superheroes into even existing so that the Teen Titans an take all the heroic plaudits.
With a villain to defeat and a female film director (a sly dig at Patty Jenkins director of Wonder Woman maybe?) now on side to make the Robin movie all seems set to be happy ever after if it were not for the fact that they do have to defeat Slade who’s constantly referred to run mock booming bravado every time his name is said.
For once it should be adults dragging their children to see this because it is gloriously daft, ram packed with far more jokes for adults than there are for the children. Nothing is off bounds with digs at the flop Green Lantern movie, movies with a message, Batman v Superman and even Stan Lee himself sending up his own Marvel cameos. Teen Titans Go To the Movies even takes swipes at The Lion King, Shia leBoeuf, Inspirational movie songs, a blink and you’ll miss it gag about Henry Cavill’s Justice League / Mission Impossible moustache and even some jokes at the expense of Aquaman & the death of Batman’s parents which are darkly subversive but go by too quickly to take offence at.
Brilliantly irreverent it plays like The Lego Movie meets South Park. This is loads of fun which flies by with a deliberately awkward last line to cause parents plenty of embarrassment when you’re driving the kids home. Teen Titans Go To the movies is one of those rare children’s movies that adults will enjoy even more.
Here’s the Teen Titans Go! To the Movies trailer…….