Shazam!

SHAZAM! (12)

D: David F. Sandberg

Warner Bros/New Line/DC/Seven Bucks/Mad Ghost (Peter Safran)

US 2019

132 mins

Science Fiction/Fantasy/Comedy

W: Henry Gayden & Darren Lemke [based on characters from DC comics]

DP: Maxime Alexandre

Ed: Michel Aller

Mus: Benjamin Wallfisch

Asher Angel (Billy Batson), Zachary Levi (Shazam), Jack Dylan Grazer (Freddy Freeman), Mark Strong (Thaddeus Sivina), Faithe Herman (Darla Dudley), Grace Fulton (Mary Bromfield), Ian Chen (Eugene Choi), Jovan Armand (Pedro Peña), Djimon Hounsou (Shazam)

Nearly 20 years in the making, Shazam was in initial pre-production in the early 2000's under the original character's name (Captain Marvel) and was only really greenlit following the huge success of other DC movies, and eventually released shortly after Marvel's take on Captain Marvel, sparking an internet war between rival fans.

Coming out at a time when a new superhero movie seem to be released every single month, Shazam does something different with the usual tropes in the respect that a big, tough superhero actually has the mind of a teenage boy.

Adolescent Billy Batson is the alter-ego of the adult superhero, a troubled teenager searching for his long-lost mother in-between spells at various foster homes. He is given his superpowers by a dying wizard who has chosen him as his champion and finds a nemesis in Dr. Thaddeus Sivina, a super-villain powered by the seven deadly sins.

In short, it's Kick-Ass meets Big, with its tongue firmly in cheek as it displaces a child's mind in an adults body as well as having a superhero who doesn't quite know how to discover his true potential. Zachary Levi is great as the title character and both juvenile actors in the main parts do a great job with their fraternal-friendship double act.

Though the film is very much to be treated as a comedy, it does have some dramatic plot points and dark moments, and these shifts in tone don't quite marry as well as they should. The biggest negative, however, is Mark Strong's villain, who is incredibly poorly written and even the opening scene to the movie isn't nearly enough to explain why he's evil for the sake of being evil. In fact, the opening scene to the film could have been thrown away and the film would have been much better for it, as it really needed to be at least 20 minutes shorter than it actually is.

Highly enjoyable as a throwaway piece of popcorn entertainment, and though a sequel is inevitable, it really doesn't need one.

Personally, I think the comparison of this to Marvel's Captain Marvel is stupid. They're both completely different stories and have no real base for comparison at all.

6/10