Juvenile but smart superhero parody
Ten years into Hollywood’s superhero phase, how far can we be from spontaneous genre combustion? In April, Avengers: Infinity War felt like a make-or-break moment, with its 28 co-leads from across the Marvel multiverse, and a plot that demanded a working knowledge of at least eight other movies. But the box office was Brobdingnagian and the fans kept the faith.
Billed as “The Superhero Movie To End All Superhero Movies, Hopefully”, this uproarious animation, spun off from a Cartoon Network series, is the hilariously savage, self-reflexive genre takedown the Deadpool films thought they were – while also being a sugar-dusted pop-art delight that, one unexpectedly brutal Shia Labeouf joke notwithstanding, is broadly suitable for children aged three and up.
Amid the bonanza of every costumed crime-fighter being handed their own franchise, the Teen Titans are missing out. A quintet of sidekicks and bitparters led by Robin (Scott Menville), the Titans’ heroism tends towards the juvenile – a showdown with Balloon Man (The Inbetweeners’ Greg Davies), an enormous inflatable robot laying waste to their home town of Jump City, ends in operatic flatulence.
To A-listers like Superman (Nicolas Cage) and Batman (Jimmy Kimmel), the Titans are an odd fringe act. But the gang go to increasingly desperate lengths to persuade a famous director (Kristen Bell) to give them a shot.
That premise sets the stage for quick-fire weirdness, dazzlingly drawn in the “Calarts style” (after the California Institute of the Arts, where it was incubated). There is also an unexpected connection to Pixar’s Incredibles 2, with both films deploying mass-hypnosis metaphors to reflect the cultural stagnation brought on by the present superhero fad.
But in their very different ways, both films are bolt-from-the-blue exceptions. Teen Titans may be unflaggingly daft, but outright silliness is rarely this smart.