The live-action Batman movies haven’t had a lot of time for him since 1997’s Batman & Robin. Since then, we’ve only really had a much-maligned Easter egg with Joseph Gordon Levitt’s character in The Dark Knight Rises and a more significant animated outing for Michael Cera’s take on the Boy Wonder in last year’s The LEGO Batman Movie. The Robin of Teen Titans Go (voiced by Scott Menville), isn’t best pleased about this. Since The LEGO Movie was released, Warner Bros has put out a number of winking animated meta-comedies in this vein, but this feels different in tone. The series must have an older fanbase that this is partly pitched towards, because this is absolutely jam-packed with gags that are going to go over kids’ heads, whether they’re deep-cut comics references or just deceptively dark for a PG certificate movie, while still being packaged in a noisy, colourful, child-friendly package. To place it on a scale with other superhero comedies, this finds some hitherto unknown sweet spot between Deadpool and last summer’s Captain Underpants, while also coinciding with the more distant Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. In relation to the former, the film reruns one of Deadpool 2‘s big gags in the second act. Maybe this film’s version feels darker because it’s actually in a family movie, but it’s also somehow funnier and more imaginative than its adult counterpart. It’s at least self-aware enough to cover its most predictable plot twist (which will be obvious even if you’re not up on your DC character names) by having another character immediately say they saw it coming, as if to flummox those in the audience who go to these things to do the “I understood that reference” routine. The movie earns that because up to that point, its entire approach to making you laugh is catching you by surprise with how dark, or sudden, or unpredictably a setpiece ends. Whenever it zigs with an Everything Is Awesome-esque music number featuring Michael Bolton as a singing tiger, it zags with the utterly unexpected way in which that sequence ends. It feels a little overstretched, even at 88 minutes, but never fully outstays its welcome. Teen Titans Go! To The Movies is a truly bizarre entry into the DC cinematic canon, sharpening the same sort of gentle meta-nudges we get in the LEGO movies to inflict the blunt force trauma of Batman V Superman and Suicide Squad. In short, it’s a DC film that absolutely does not take itself seriously. At times, it’s near impossible to tell who the actual target audience is meant to be, but it’s a vibrant and often staggering over-extension of the vogue for meta-humans and meta-humour. Teen Titans Go! To The Movies is in UK cinemas now.
