Teen Titans Go series

(On TV, March 2020) It certainly had to happen at some point—The overly serious Teen Titans being confronted by their parodic offsprings in Teen Titans Go! Vs. Teen Titans. It’s not quite a melding of form: This being produced through the current Teen Titans Go! property, it’s a Go-ification of the earlier series, as its characters are brought into the comic universe for a few laughs. This is not a bad thing: I find the Go! series hilarious, and I’m not sure the dramatic intensity of the first Teen Titans series would have meshed well in a half-and-half scenario. To its credit, this straight-to-DVD film does have the good sense of escalating the stakes as befits an event story: By the end of the film, several teams of Teen Titans of various influences are plucked from the multiverse for the final battle. While Teen Titans Go! Vs. Teen Titans clearly doesn’t have the budget or refinement of a theatrical animated film like Teen Titan Go to the Movies, it’s loopy and entertaining enough for fans of the Go! series and delivers enough epic metafiction for viewers to enjoy.

(On Cable TV, March 2019) Now that we’re in the degenerate period of superhero movies, anything goes, and that includes the Teen Titans Go! Approach of deliberately poking at the clichés of the genre for sheer anarchic comedy. It’s an approach that defined the TV show, and now they get the chance to take it to the big screen with Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, a great goofy take on not only superheroes, but superhero movies themselves. While some of the smaller quick jokes can be impenetrable to those who haven’t seen the show, the overall concept is accessible to all: here are a few teenagers tasked with defending the city, but they still very much remain irresponsible teenagers. Don’t look for a moral or an uplifting sentiment—it quickly gets obvious that at least one of the characters sees a movie about them as validation of who they are, and everything else is irrelevant. There are plenty of pokes and prods at the subgenre, and enjoyable musical interludes to make it even more entertaining. The jokes are numerous, and one of them will crack a smile from even the most jaded viewers. (I completely lost it at, of all things, a detachable-thumb joke.)  Plenty of characters from the DC continuity are used to not-always-heroic purposes and the result, frankly, feels a lot like Deadpool for kids—equally clever in its deconstruction of superhero clichés, and as frantically fast paced as well. I liked Teen Titans Go! To the Movies quite a bit and it should have a much bigger audience than just fans of the TV show.