Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse’ on VOD, a Mega-Crossover Boasting About a Million Characters

Overstuffed animated feature-length outing Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse – now on VOD, debuting on Cartoon Network May 28 and hitting HBO Max June 28 – serves as a reminder that, back in the days before about five years ago, “multiverse” comic book stories were simply called “crossovers.” (Why, even Marvel and DC called a temporary cease-fire in order to produce a few MONUMENTAL crossover comics in the ’70s and ’80s!) Of course, anything bandying about the word “multiverse” is hot-snot property right now, whether it’s Marvel Cinematic Universe/Spider-Man shenanigans, brainmelting Rick and Morty plots or the wild inner-outer psycho saga that is Everything Everywhere All at Once, so it makes sense that Teen Titans Go! would jump in and spoof the trend with its signature meta-snark. Do they righteously skewer it or give it a pass? We’ll see, but my money’s on the former.

TEEN TITANS GO! & DC SUPER HERO GIRLS: MAYHEM IN THE MULTIVERSE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: As usual, the Teen Titans aren’t really Go!-ing anywhere. They’re on the couch admiring the beat-up circa-’99 entertainment center they just found on a curb, with Cyborg (Khary Payton) especially in awe of its physical media storage capacity. I mean, it has TONS of space for CASSETTES! Now it’s time for a perfunctory re-introduction of the primary characters here: expert in meta-commentary Cyborg, angsty wizard-person Raven (Tar Strong), shapeshifter Beast Boy (Greg Cipes), alien weirdo Starfire (Hynden Walch) and deeply insecure, small-handed denier of his sidekick status Robin (Scott Menville). And then, obnoxious villain Control Freak (Alexander Polinsky) shows up to basically tell everyone that they’re in a “crossover event” involving the DC Super Hero Girls, and there are many irreverent quips and zingers to be had about that.

And so, we shift to the DC Super Hero Girls’ universe, which initiates serious character overload. The main teen superpowered ladies are Wonder Woman (Grey Griffin), Batgirl (Tara Strong again), Bumblebee (Kimberly Brooks), Supergirl (Nicole Sullivan), the Jess Cruz Green Lantern (Myrna Velasco) and Zatanna (Kari Wahlgren), who catch wind of a diabolical plan: Billian (that’s “billionaire” crossed with “villain,” get it?) Lex Luthor (Will Friedle) teams up with Kryptonian demon-goddess-sorceror-etc. Cythonna (Missi Pyle) to zap their enemies to the purgatorial Phantom Zone. Lex also assembles his Legion of Doom, and I’m growing weary of listing names immediately followed by different names in parentheticals, so I’m going to chill on that for a sec and only briefly mention the question-mark guy and the two feline-themed ladies and bring up how Harley Quinn (Tara Strong yet again) plays a somewhat significant role here, because she’s former besties with Batgirl, which is a little subplot in itself. Now catch your breath, because there’s even more nuts and bolts we’ve gotta cover in the next paragraph.

This series of events also involves the Justice League: superego Superman (Max Mittelman), sullen dark guy Batman (Keith Ferguson), hunky fishpal Aquaman (Will Friedle) and several others, including that guy who runs really fast, the guy with wings, two other Green Lanterns and a few more even beyond that. We learn that Superman is quite the mainsplainer, and nobody can ever understand what Batman says because he speaks only in indecipherable grumbles. The dire situation involving the LoD has Wonder Woman considering jumping ship from the DCSHG to the JL, and at this point, so much time has passed in this universe, you wonder if TTG! is ever going to re-emerge in this plot, because this is supposed to be “mayhem” in the “multiverse,” right? But of course they do, mostly to comment on how the less-popular DCSHG are the main characters here, and obviously are piggybacking on the TTG! brand to boost their own profiles. “By the way, our adventure was in theaters!” Robin snipes. BAM.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The TTG! members point out that this isn’t their first crossover – and it’s not even the first they’ve done with DCSHG, as they met in an episode of TTG!. There also was Teen Titans Go! Vs. Teen Titans, which pitted the superserious Titans against the supersnarky Titans for a mulitversal smashup that’s a notch or two more fun than Mayhem in the Multiverse.

Performance Worth Watching Hearing: Friedle’s like, hey, man cool-dude take on Aquaman is pretty amusing. “I wanted to call ourselves the Super Friends, man, but I got outvoted.”

Memorable Dialogue: Cyborg shows he knows his literary terminology: “This is the denouement. THE DENOUEMENT!”

Sex and Skin: None!

Our Take: Fair warning: TTG!&DCSHG: MITM sports a roughly 80/20 DCSHG-to-TTG! ratio. Which means it’s sometimes funny, but not as funny as a typical wiseass TTG! outing. One moment finds Wonder Woman, lordess of earnestness, trying to deliver a one-liner, but openly admitting she’s not very good at such things; in another, the DCSHG talk about their feelings and what they learned, and Cyborg comments, “We never do that!” These characters’ psychotherapists have plenty of things to work on, but self-awareness is not one of them.

Narratively, this special is plot-driven until that plot lands in the TTG! TV room and grinds to a halt – and all of a sudden this whole endeavor gets noticeably funnier, including a gag in which Beast Boy turns into a yak with four stomachs, opening the door for four times the gastro-comedy. And that big overall plot? Standard fare in which the fate of the world hangs in balance, but with more jokes than if, say, Zach Snyder was directing it. Bottom line: Reasonably fun stuff, but could use more WAFFLES WAFFLES WAFFLES!

Our Call: STREAM IT. Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse lacks enough multiversal mayhem and TTG! sarcasto-irreverence to make one ponder calling the Truth in Advertising Dept. But it’s still entertaining enough to warrant a watch.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.