Coastal View News
For this review, I was planning to watch “Avengers:
Endgame”, because it is a big deal and everyone is going crazy about it. But
then I thought maybe I shouldn’t, because I haven’t seen all of the “Avengers”
movies (I only have so many hours set aside for this series that is reproducing
with rabbit-like rapidity) and so I probably wouldn’t do it the justice its
avid fans would like, or demand, of a review.
So I saw a different superhero movie. You might be
thinking, “Oh, you saw ‘Captain Marvel’.” I did not. “Hellboy?” Nope. “Is ‘Black
Panther’ still in the theater?” No … or, I don’t know … But, anyway, the movie I
saw was “Shazam!” Now you might be thinking, “Huh, you mean that Shaq movie
from the 90s?” No, that was “Kazaam” (though, I admit, I flirted with this
mistake too).
“Shazam!” is not a kids’ movie featuring Shaq as a genie.
But it does feature kids and magic. One such kid is Thaddeus Sivana (Ethan
Pugiotto). He’s got a mean dad and brother, and, on one cold night in 1974, they
are having a fight in the car when, magically, Sivana gets whisked away to
another realm where a wizard (Djimon Hounsou) tells Sivana he is looking for a
new champion to help round up the Seven Deadly Sins, which were released on
Earth awhile back.
But Sivana is a bad boy who is tempted by the Sins, so
Wizard sends him back to the car, where Thaddeus makes a ruckus, distracts his
dad, and causes a car crash.
Zoom ahead to present day and another bad boy, Billy
Batson (Asher Angel), is making his own ruckus around town. Like Sivana, he’s
got some parental issues—namely, his parents abandoned him and so he was forced
to bounce around various foster families. However, unlike Sivana, Billy finally
ends up with a cool foster family (an impossibly cool foster family), including
parents who care and foster siblings who are polite and caring (again,
impossibly polite and caring). Billy’s roommate, Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan
Grazer)—not to be confused with the Atlanta Braves first baseman—is all into superheroes
and is especially cool.
Another way that Billy is not like Sivana is that Billy
is deemed worthy to be the wizard’s champion. So the wizard makes him a
superhero—i.e., Shazam (Zachary Levi). Shazam is super fast and strong,
bulletproof, and can shoot electricity out of his body.
At first Billy/Shazam just plays around with his powers,
like any kid would, and doesn’t really use them for good. But then Freddy, who,
again, knows all about superheroes and so knows how they ought to act, calls
him out on it (basically: “With great power comes … yada yada yada”).
And then, also, Sivana—now Dr. Sivana (Mark Strong)—reemerges
as a super villain and, after killing his mean dad and brother, comes after
Shazam. So Billy/Shazam kind of has to kick it into gear and play the
superhero.
So there’s a fight, and it’s like kids vs. adults, and it
looks hopeless, then not, and then … well, I’ll let you guess. If your guess is
based on your knowledge of some very standard, unoriginal superhero plot, your
guess is probably completely right.
So, yeah, “Shazam!” is unoriginal. I guess the foster-kid
thing, and the parent problems in general, are supposed to be a different angle.
(Though, don’t most superheroes have parent problems?) But it’s all like flat
soda: No fizz. No pop.
And insofar as you like epic superhero battles, “Shazam!”
is likely to disappoint you. That’s only the last little bit of the movie. The
bulk of the time is spent on uncompelling backstory and adolescent hijinks.
Now, I didn’t loathe “Shazam!”—and, to be fair, it seems
like a lot of other people liked it. I just didn’t know why I should care about
it or its characters, or why I should be interested in it, or, indeed, why I
should want to watch it.
I guess I should have seen “Avengers: Endgame”. Alas.
