Code review must be a first class citizen of your team culture to be successful. Yup, you nailed it. Overall it sounds like the culprit here is inexperienced

Code review must be a first class citizen of your team culture to be successful. Yup, you nailed it. Overall it sounds like the culprit here is inexperienced management -- that somehow "knows" that code review is important, but doesn't (really) understand why. To the extent of being able to justify the, you know, time cost involved to upper management constantly breathing down their necks to get the next shiny new button working.