Review for Teen Titans Go! To The Movies

The Teen Titans are generally seen as the Z-Team of the Superhero world. The group (Robin, Cyborg, Raven, Beast Boy and Starfire) are not characters you can imagine anyone creating a film about and the rest of the characters in this universe make them well aware of it. No one wants to see a film with these characters and despite being part of the Batman-lore, Robin will never be seen as anything more than a sidekick… and sidekicks don’t get movies made about them.

Meeting Director Jade Wilson she tells them that they only way anyone would make a film about them is if there were no other superheroes. To solve this the team first decide to go back in time to make sure all the other heroes are not created: such as making sure that Bruce Wayne’s family don’t go down ‘Murder Alley’, but this doesn’t work. Instead, they resolve that they need an arch-nemesis for them to go up against. The team find this is the form of Slade (also known in the comics as Deathstroke). However, this means that the team may be split up in order for Robin to finally get that limelight he desired, but will this be the best or worst moment of his life?

Teen Titans Go! To The Movies is either the greatest movie ever… or the worst. I really can’t decide. Now, I enjoyed this film to some extent and even though I had never seen any of the episodes of the TV show I didn’t feel lost, which is a huge bonus with any TV to Film adaptation. However, I did feel at times that many of the jokes were far too meta for the kids. I can understand why this was rated PG. It is not due to Violence or Language, but simply so that the child had an adult who could explain some of the jokes and lines within the film. I laughed so much when I recognised the voice of Nicholas Cage as Superman, but you would need to know a vast amount of nerd trivia to know why that is funny.

Throughout the film I found myself enjoying what was happening and the actual point of the film is actually quite clever with these characters (who even a nerd like me only recognised Robin and Cyborg) wanting to have a film and yet not being well known enough to get one. In a way, the joke reference to Guardians of the Galaxy was apt as they too were a team that only the uber-nerds who read every comic book knew of before their first film. As the film continued, I felt that a lot of what was happening felt like this was just a TV-Movie and could have easily have just been split up into two or three episodes.

The animation looks great throughout and was fun, bright and very vibrant for the younger audience to look at. It made a change to not see something dark and broody from the DC Universe. However, the use of music and songs was also bizarre and I’m not sure whether this is a feature of the show, but I found this strange and neither amusing nor entertaining. If these had been cut or reduced to maybe one song, it would have been better.

Oddly, the only extra are two animatics for the film. Now these are nice to see them alongside the finished product, but I don’t think anyone was really clamouring to see how they created this film. If anything, they should have included a few episodes of the show or maybe a few interviews with the stars and creators.

Teen Titans Go! To The Movies is such an oddity that I’m not sure whether I can recommend it. Comic book and superhero fans will not need any persuasion as this series has been going for a number of years and I can’t deny the grouping of these characters makes for some fun and amusing moments. I just wish they hadn’t tried to be so clever throughout the film as the more they did it, the less clever it became. As it is, as an offshoot to the DC Universe this felt more like something Marvel would have done within the MCU and that is not a bad thing. I would certainly recommend giving it a view, but I wouldn’t GO out of my way to do so.