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| Beast Boy, Cyborg, Robin, Starfire, and Raven in Teen Titans Go! To the Movies. Image courtesy Warner Bros. |
Everything
about Teen
Titans Go! To the Movies
is
a lark. Almost nothing is designed to be
taken seriously, especially the titular collection
of lackluster, premature superheroes whose fascination with waffles
greatly outweighs their ability to fight crime. They are ridiculous,
and their hero’s journey ends with them
embracing their ridiculousness. Yet a
serious
movie about their adventures would be a little too in line with the
current D.C. Universe ethos; to be interesting and unique in a
franchise overrun by dour heroes, it takes a little madness and a
whole lot of disinterest in following the established playbook. Teen
Titans Go! To the Movies
may
be a lark, but it's a necessary and surprisingly fun lark.
It's
wholly appropriate for this movie
to kick off with Daffy Duck going bonkers ahead of the title screen.
The film,
like the show that inspired it, thrives on
absurd lunacy.
It's an odd movie,
littered with fart jokes, butt jokes, deep cut comic references, and
asides that lead to asides that ultimately go nowhere. The eponymous
Teen Titans, Robin (Scott Menville), Raven (Tara Strong), Cyborg
(Khary Payton), Starfire (Hynden Walch) and Beast Boy (Greg Cipes),
are heroic infrequently, yet take great pride in their ability to
thwart crime in spite of themselves.
They
spend the lion share of the movie trying to get director Jade Wilson
(Kristen Bell) to make a movie about them, because a movie would
solidify their status as heroes, and because the medium is the
message.
Their sole motivation for acquiring a
nemesis, the hypnotic Slade (Will Arnett), is to land a film
contract. The entire plot of this movie hinges on making a movie,
which is supremely meta.
Then
again, given the source material, the decision makes a fair amount of
sense. Teen
Titans Go! To the Movies
has
a lot of fun with its premise, lacing joke after joke making fun of
D.C., Marvel, Stan Lee, and every other superhero related topic under
the sun. The fart jokes, random references to waffles, and extended
dance scenes round out the humor for the target young
audience,
but the soul of this movie belongs to parody and chaos and nerdiness.
No superhero topic is out of bounds to go after, no Deadpool vs.
Deathstroke argument too obscure to elaborate
and ultimately argue about.
The movie veers for the sake of veering, dipping through topic after
topic, and musical number after musical number, as it runs through
the tiny amount of plot it has designed for itself.
Teen
Titans Go! To the Movies both
benefits from and is diminished a wandering plot. Having little story
to work from results in some occasionally inspired lunacy, including
peculiar
but
well done homages to Disney franchises and other popular animated
programs, as well as a whole time travel subplot that ultimately
makes zero difference to the story. In
most movies,
time travel is a
central
focus of the plot.
In this movie
it's
a method for some joke delivery and parody, and then immediately
undone once the logical conclusion of the activity comes to fruition.
It does not matter at all to the story; it happens, and then it
unhappens to the point where it doesn't matter, and that's
essentially the overarching joke and the
sole purpose for doing it.
And
yet, there are times when some consistent narrative thread would be
of use. Teen
Titans Go! To the Movies
has
a shaggy vibe, influenced heavily by the 11-minute episodes that came
before. The need to pad out the run time (which hovers around the
90-minute mark) results in some serious drag. The movie never veers
into boring, but it loses energy as it enters the third act and the
wackiness is invaded by unfortunate clichés. Teen
Titans Go! To the Movies could
be more effective with 60 minutes of material instead of pushing to
90.
Less
would be better than more for Teen
Titans Go! To the Movies,
but what is offered on screen is still pretty fun. It has a sly smile
hiding under the shenanigans and periodic songs revealing how silly
the whole superhero thing is. What is missing in substance is made up
for in silliness and a disregard for the rules. It’s
a ludicrous film made by people who know exactly how ludicrous their
parody is and embrace the chaos they create.
Review:
Three and a half out of Five Stars
Click here to see the trailer.
Rating:
PG
Run
time: 93 minutes
Genre:
Action
tl;dr
What
Worked: The humor,
Will Arnett, Kristen Bell, absurdism
What
Sucked: The
very thin plot
Watch
As Well:
Teen
Titans, Teen Titans Go!, The Lego Movie
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