When the Titans need to learn how to work together, what better way to promote teamwork than… fusing them together into a monstrous abomination? What?
That’s but one of many strange things to occur in this installment of Teen Titans Go!, and… yeah, this is a weird one. I can get down with weird, crazy plots and what have you, as I’m sure my track record will attest, but poor writing is not my bag. The makings of a fairly fun outing are present here, but th be edition is just all over the place.
The main problem is the script. There’s a main through line of a plot here that’s consistent through the whole story (“Titans need to work together”), but transitions between scenes are either confusing or outright nonexistent. A scene will be set up, go for a page or two, and then it will cut to a completely different scene or event, sometimes in the middle of a line of dialogue, and then repeat. It genuinely feels like three or four different scripts were thrown together, simply because they had a similar theme.
It’s a shame, too, because there are a few really great lines. A lot of the concepts are pretty funny, too, and could have made for some entertaining stories on their own: the team complaining about an endless Power Point presentation from Robin, the team playing some sort of Twister knock-off, and several members being fused together into one nightmarish form could have all stood on their own as individual stories. Instead, Nuhfer and Morrissey try to do way too much and the end product is muddled.
Erich Owen fares better with his visual style, which is bright and fun and spot-on with the show. He’s not immune to transition snafus either, though, as there are some bizarrely staged panels that don’t flow well.
That first shot of Beast Boy comes out of nowhere. He doesn’t announce that he found something, nobody asks him to find anything, he just appears with this weird game board in hand and everyone rolls with it. Like the writing, it’s confusing and could have benefitted from some tighter editing.
I did not like this, more due to presentation than content. Had there been a little more polish and focus this could have been fun, but as it is, this installment of TTG is a confusing mess.
Recommended if:
- You’re overly forgiving or a die-hard fan.
- Other than that, I don’t know.
Overall: Sloppy writing and poor continuity tank what could have been a fun story. There are some good ideas and some genuinely good bits of dialogue, but the story is all over the place. Teen Titans Go! is supposed to be fun and silly, sure, but it still needs to adhere to basic storytelling conventions. This isn’t very good on account of how good it could have been.
SCORE: 3.5/10
