...and these tiny tots are super too!

AS YET another Marvel film hits the multiplexes, here’s the perfect antidote, an animated mickey-take of the superhero genre that begins with Balloon Man, an inflatable pink giant (with an English accent), terrorising an American city, at least until the Teen Titans work out that, like all inflatables, he can be popped.

Which he is, with an expulsion of air that sounds remarkably like a burst of flatulence.

And so the stage is set for 88 minutes of cleverly-crafted goofiness, which should achieve the double-whammy of appealing to children and adults alike. Teen Titans is a Cartoon Network TV series which evolved out of DC Comics characters created during the early Sixties. Evidently inspired by The Beatles, the original Teen Titans — also nicknamed the Fab Foursome — were adolescent sidekicks to grown-up superheroes such as Batman. In this film, Robin of Batman fame (left) is fed up with being just what he is, an adjunct. He and his fellow

second-stringers yearn to be fullyfledged superheroes, which is the only way they will get what they really crave: their own movie.

First, though, they need an archnemesis. And they also need to rid the world of all genuine superheroes, which they try to do by travelling back in time and sabotaging all the famous origin stories which yielded Superman, Spider-Man etc.

The animation is deliberately unsophisticated, as are many of the jokes. But there are countless references that only clued-up adults will savour, as well as a voice cast that includes Will Arnett, Nicolas Cage, Kristen Bell and, as Batman, talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel.