"Shazam!"

By Matt Duncan
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.