Teen Titans Go! To the Movies Review

Here's a movie I wasn't planning on seeing. When I saw that they announced a "Teen Titans Go!" movie, I was confused because it seemed like a silly idea. Even with animated shows that I like, usually when they branch out and make a movie it ends up being underwhelming and you leave with the idea that maybe they should've just stuck with their TV show. Given that I've never even laid eyes on an episode of the show, I figured I'd let the fans go see it if they wanted to and do something better with my time as I expected it to get panned by critics, tank at the box office and only be appreciated and understood by fans of the original show, most of whom I assumed are in the single digits when it comes to age. Then at some point along the road they switched their title to "Teen Titans Go! To the Movies" and that made me laugh for the wrong reasons. I don't even think the trailers looked that great. Yet here I am writing a review for this thing, anyways. Why? Because grown adults who are often super picky with their movie reviews promised me that this was a surprisingly hilarious movie. Don't believe me? Head on over to Rotten Tomatoes and check out that 89 percent score from the critics. Yeah I'm as shocked as you are, so curiosity got the best of me and I had to see for myself.

As far as a quick history lesson goes, the Teen Titans were initially introduced in the comics back in the 1960's and originally included Kid Flash, Robin, Aqualad and Wonder Girl. Over the years they've had a lot of different adaptations and different combinations of characters. The current squad in this movie is Robin, Beast Boy, Cyborg, Raven and Starfire. Again, I've not watched any episode of the TV show, but before "Teen Titans Go!" became a thing, there was a 2003 animated series simply titled "Teen Titans." That show was more serious in nature as the apparent goal was to emulate a lot of the 90's superhero cartoons like "Batman: The Animated Series" or "X-Men." That show lasted until 2006, getting five seasons and 65 episodes. "Teen Titans Go!" began in 2013 after a successful run of shorts called "New Teen Titans." This new show changed the animation style to make the Teen Titans look more like the Powerpuff Girls and has a much more relaxed, comedic tone. These changes angered fans of the prior "Teen Titans" show, but it's survived just fine through all the hate as they're currently on their fifth season with a total of over 200 episodes that are around 11 minutes each. With all of that said, you now know just about as much as I do about the Titans.

Onto the movie itself now. I obviously didn't go in with any prior prejudice to this like some might due to the shift in animation style and overall tone. That's not why I was planning on skipping it. I just thought it looked dumb. With the promise from critics that it's actually a good movie, I went in rather curious. And yeah, I left the theater having been extremely entertained, making this whole experience one of the most pleasantly surprising movie experiences of the year. The plot of this movie in many ways is a commentary on the current state of superhero movies as the Titans live in a day where everyone is getting their own superhero movie. All of the posters at the theater are of all the latest superhero movies coming out and it's rather ridiculous how many are coming out and how many are being planned for the future. The Titans are sitting in the theater watching the trailers and, while I won't spoil which movies are advertising, I got a kick out of the movies they were advertising as being made. It was very representative of our modern day with some of the silly ideas they're coming up with. Yet through it all, neither Robin nor the Teen Titans have had a movie made out of them. Robin has a dream of finally getting his movie, so the Titans set out to make that happen.

Again, speaking of the movie being self-referential, the Teen Titans have never had a movie about them. Yeah, sure, Robin has shown up plenty of times in various Batman movies. Cyborg was in the recent "Justice League" movie. But "Teen Titans Go! To the Movies" is the very first theatrically released movie about the Teen Titans. Amidst all the years and years of superhero movies, why have these characters not had their own movie, despite having been around for 54 years? Because no one really takes them seriously. Robin himself has always been the laughing stock of the Batman universe, which is why anytime one is trying to make a serious movie about Batman, Robin is generally left out. The best interpretation of Robin was Joseph Gordon-Levitt in "The Dark Knight Rises." And we didn't learn he was Robin until a fun Easter egg was thrown out at the very end of the movie, right before he found the bat cave. Even then, had Nolan or Warner Bros. continued that arc with JGL in the lead, speculation was more towards him becoming Nightwing than straight-up Robin. All of this made the plot of "Teen Titans Go! To the Movies" rather amusing as the movie was about the Teen Titans fighting the stereotypes that their characters have presented from the beginning.

All of this self-referential stuff is exactly why many people have referred to this movie as "Deadpool" for kids. And yeah, that fits. Personally I love "Deadpool" because of all the fourth-wall breaking, self-referential humor of which we call meta humor. Other people love "Deadpool" because they finally get a foul-mouthed, raunchy superhero movie. I don't care much for any of that. But the meta humor I love and both "Deadpool" movies were stacked full of it, thus causing me to roll over in my chair for the entire run time each movie. That's also why I enjoyed "Teen Titans Go! To the Movies." Although I personally have a better comparison for you than "Deadpool" that makes a lot more sense in my mind and is a much more family-friendly comparison. That movie is "The LEGO Batman Movie," which is a movie that spent the entire run time poking fun at every incarnation of Batman that has ever existed. Being a huge fan of Batman myself, as DC has kinda always been my thing, "LEGO Batman" was a richly entertaining experience that had me laughing harder than I can remember almost to the point where I needed a moment to breathe, but the movie rarely gave that moment. It's in that style of humor that "Teen Titans Go! To the Movies" dabbles in.

Whereas "LEGO Batman" is all about the Batman humor, "Teen Titans Go! To the Movies" is relentless when it comes to the entire DC history. As is the case with "LEGO Batman" in that the more you know about Batman, the funnier that movie is, the more you know about DC, the funnier "Teen Titans Go! To the Movies. Personally I was traumatized when they kept smash the Atom. In my head I was like, "No! Ray Palmer!" I found it absolutely hilarious that Nicolas Cage was voicing Superman. And of course you knew a Martha joke was coming. If you're not a DC person and you wouldn't know why such things like this are funny, then your probably going to miss a lot of the humor of this movie and thus leave feeling a bit lost. The Nicolas Cage thing I found especially perfect. I also personally enjoyed looking in the background and pointing out pretty much every DC character from the comics and movies. When they're sitting in the theater, they're all there. Well, a huge percentage of them anyways. And there's even more in the posters and in various background shots with Easter eggs scattered throughout for DC fans. And, believe it or not, the movie also has a lot of jokes geared towards Marvel, which I was totally not expecting.

The biggest thing that separates this movie from "LEGO Batman" is a shockingly emotional and well-written film even when you strip aside all the meta humor. "Teen Titans Go! To the Movies" relies very heavily on all of its humor while the plot itself is a bit more juvenile. The movie makes no attempt to try anything super deep or emotional and even recognizes the fact that you can see the "plot twists" of the movie a mile away, meaning there's not much of a movie when you look past the humor. The movie is also loaded with musical numbers, all of which are extremely dumb and cheesy. Granted, I think I went in prepared to lose brain cells in the process, thus making it so I was actually laughing quite a bit during the musical numbers, but in several moments the cheese was dumped on a little too heavy. With that and plenty of other moments, it was apparent that they were favoring the young crowd quite a bit, making you occasionally wonder why you paid money to see this. Also, the movie is only 84 minutes long with credits, yet they did have to stretch quite a bit in order to get there. So when push comes to shove, this isn't a movie I need to see again, but for a one-time watch it's a surprisingly great time, especially if you like DC. Thus my grade is an 8/10.