Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars
Bottom Line: Fun and entertaining fluff. DC finally gets a good villain. And a good story. And a good hero. Ok, that’s not entirely fair, Wonder Woman was good too.
DC Comics has gone the comedy route with “Shazam!” and has largely succeeded. It is a very welcome change to their all-darkness-all-the-time motif that they have been following. The movie takes a very silly premise and recognizes that it is silly and runs with it. Serial foster home runaway Billy Batson (Asher Angel) is a teen who is whisked away to a lair where a Wizard (Dijmon Hounsou), the last of 5, tells him that he is the pure of heart person necessary to wield the wizard’s power and defeat the Seven Deadly Sins. Somehow, this transfer of power turns him from a 13 year old boy into a prototypical adult superhero complete with silly costume instead of a wizard, but who cares. Given zero instruction on how to be a superhero, Billy, along with the help of his foster brother Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer), proceeds to do what any teenage boy with superpowers might do: run amok.
As I have often commented on the good Marvel movies, what makes a good superhero movie is a good villain and Dr. Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong) is wonderful. Thaddeus met the Wizard when he was a child too, but he was incredibly meanly rejected which sent him on a quest to find the Wizard once again and get the powers he believes he should have been given. Childhood trauma informs both Billy’s and Thaddeus’ world view, but only Billy was given the nurturing to overcome that trauma even if he routinely rejected it. Morals. This movie contains them.
Another moral and my personal favorite of morals in movies is that of family. You bilogicals may suck. You have no control over that. Screw them. Find your family where you can find them. The ones that treat you well and you want to treat well back. If that’s a foster family, so be it. One of my favorite parts in the movie is a throwaway scene in which the foster mom Rosa Vasquez (Marta Milans) and foster dad Victor Vasquez (Cooper Andrews) swing into action and back mom’s car out of the driveway to reveal a closeup of the bumper sticker “I’m a foster mom: What’s your superpower?” which is just perfect.
“Shazam!” also happens to be really funny. It takes a while to get going as it seriously develops the villain and establishes the plot, but once it gets going, it’s all smiles. I mean, come on! Think of being a teenager and discovering you have superpowers. That’s not the only source of comedy, but it’s an infinite well of which they tap wisely.
It may somewhat be benefiting from low expectations, but “Shazam!” was a delight. The re-watch value is strong with this one, methinks. A good mixture of story and comedy and morals. Is it just me or has the last year or so been a goldmine of comedies of varying sorts? Regardless, “Shazam!” is fluffy fun for the whole family. Ok not really, it’s kind of violent and deserves its PG-13 rating.