A bit dark for what’s being billed as a kind of family superhero film.
What They Say:
We all have a superhero inside us, it just takes a bit of magic to bring it out. In Billy Batson’s case, by shouting out one word – SHAZAM! – this streetwise 14-year-old foster kid can turn into the adult superhero Shazam.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Shazam! comes at an odd time for the DC films side of things. The push past the grimdark of the Snyder films, the hope set by Wonder Woman, and then the general delight and strong box office performance of Aquaman has a lot of people looking for that colorful and outgoing side of things from the DC world. The trailers have been delightful and there are a lot of younger fans who have grown up with the character through the animated side, especially in Young Justice, while some older moviegoers may recognize that 1970’s TV series. My own experience with the characte and family is limited as I never read much of him, few books were put out with him on his own when I used to read a ton, and I’ve mostly come to know two sides. The interesting exploration of Mary Marvel in the Bombshells comics or the ‘90s Justice League where he was comedic relief and referred to as Captain Whitebread.
I really enjoyed the trailers when they surfaced because it looked like it was going to thread that needle of kid gets powers, transforms into an adult, and deals with serious villain problems. And the film does largely succeed with that and I think what minor issues I had with it stem from editing problems and the kind of flow it has to deal with. The biggest problem of the film is that it is juggling so many stories. We have orphan kid Billy Batson running from multiple homes trying to find his birth mother, we have Billy as the transformed adult enjoying being a superhero and trying to make money at first, we have Dr. Sivana trying to figure out how to get back to the Rock of Eternity where he made the wrong choice as a child. And we have a few other orphans, adults, and side characters that come into it. It’s a very packed film and one where the lead in Shazam himself as Zachary Levi doesn’t even appear I think until the thirty minute mark.
The premise is straightforward in that the Wizard Shazam is waiting to his dying breath to find someone he can transfer his powers into. He’s lost his brothers and sisters defending the thrones at the Rock of Eternity over the millennia after making a mistake in who they gifted powers to before (i.e. Black Adam, which is a separate film supposedly still on the way). The Wizard is looking for someone pure of heart to take on the qualities of his name, i.e Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury. We see how Sivana in 1974 chose wrong and was attracted by the power of the Seven Deadly Sins that the Wizard is keeping in check. He then spends his life looking at how to get back to that place to gain the power, realizing that he is not a good person or a hero and opting to go all in on as the bad guy. And with the way he was raised (played wonderfully by John Glover), it’s no surprise that he’s prime villain material.
Sivanna’s grabbing of this power forces the Wizard’s hand, which brings Billy into the equation. Asher Angel does a solid job as Billy in feeling disconnected from everything and just trying to find his way home to his mother, which is its own heartbreaking subplot that should have been left for another film. He’s paired mostly with Jack Dylan Grazer as Fredy Freeman, another foster kid in the place that Billy ends up in. Freddy’s fun in that he’s a superhero enthusiast and adds that kind of “that’s how it’d be in the world if there really were superheroes” aspect. But there’s a kind of frenetic and overeager approach to the character that’s off-putting because he’s so desperate to have a friend which makes it easy to see why Billy keeps his distance from him. At least until Billy needs him, having found himself stuck in the body of a greek god.
We get a lot of traditional origin story material here as Billy works to figure out his powers, Freddy documents it, and they try to keep it all a secret while navigating high school life at the same time. Sivanna’s story eventually intersects as Shazam going public reveals him as a threat to his own powers and plans, though he mostly just engineers his own destruction since you can imagine that Billy wouldn’t actively go after him if he operated at the other end of the country. Or hell, New York City. There’s a lot of fun in the montage stuff but it also just has this really awkward aspect to it since it’s dealing with so many things, from friction between Billy and Freddy to the kind of kids as adults humor that doesn’t quite click as well as it should or as smartly as it should. I really liked the whole home life thing with what the foster parents put together – being foster kids themselves – and the kind of dynamics that exist there. The whole message really is “home is what you call it” as is family and that’s a good message that’s more relevant than ever these days as people seek to be with those that they can be themselves with as opposed to what they were born into.
What surprised me with this is that, perception-wise at least, there’s been a lot of billing this film as a kind of family friendy-ish film. You know there’ll be fights and the usual things that come from that, but the showing I went to had a lot of young kids. It’s PG-13 so that’s on the parents for research, but the branding doesn’t paint it as dark as it does go here, such as researches that get turned to dust, peoples heads being bitten off, the Seven Deadly Sins tearing people apart with nothing gory shown. It just felt more violent than I had expected considering the more colorful and silly approach it took. I was also disappointed that it leaned more into the darker side visually. It’s cheaper to do special effects with night scenes but that just made everything come across more ominous on top of it taking place before Christmas, so it has a very flat and cold feeling to it that doesn’t do it any favors. It does boost up how Shazam looks but I really wanted something that felt a lot more colorful and outgoing.
I will say that I loved the third act surprise with how Shazam uses his powers to give himself an edge over Sivanna. I’ll admit I didn’t see that coming even though I absolutely should have and I’m delighted at the potential for it with a sequel. That said, I’d still love to see a longform Miracleman premium/prestige TV series to explore it all properly.
In Summary:
I had a lot of fun with Shazam once it got past the clunky opening with how it has to introduce so many backstories and origins. There’s a lot going on here and it’s trying to pack in as much as it can. I’m still shocked that a Shazam movie even got made at all, to be honest, and for it to be as much fun as it is here. Everyone put in good performances overall and I like the energy of it but I’ll admit that I miss some of the naive aspects that makes up the animated version that we’ve known a lot more of. This is one of those areas that always seems to suffer with certain types of characters being brought to the big screen. Zachary Levi is all in on this film with his performance and is a delight, making the costume work all around. It’s an enjoyable entry, one that’s a bit darker than I think it should have been, and has me hopeful we’ll still see that big showdown someday where a true sense of the character’s power is showcased.
Grade: B
