Shazam!
Sorry, had to get that out of the way before I got started.
Shazam! is hopefully
a new direction for superhero movies, or a shift back to what the genre’s main
calling card was for a long time: a childish (and perhaps naïve) imagination
run wild. I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m tired of the brooding,
moody superheroes. Just because Christopher Nolan did it so well with The Dark Knight doesn’t mean everyone running around in colorful tights
needs to be reincarnated as a wet blanket.
Sometimes, when you go to the theater, you just want to feel
like a kid again, not get lost in crappy, oversimplified monologues on the
societal reasons villains become villains and superheroes whose lives are
destroyed in the process of saving an ungrateful world. It’s supposed to be
fun.
And Shazam! has
enjoyability in spades.
The plot is simple. There is good magic and bad magic. The
former is embodied in the bright red suit and giant lightning bolt of Shazam,
while the latter is delivered in the shape of the Seven Deadly Sins, who latch
onto a devilish Mark Strong (I foresee further bad guy roles for him in the
future). The two square off for supremacy.
Throw in a downtrodden teenager, an orphan seeking his
mother, connecting with his new foster siblings and we have all the watermarks
of an origin story.
The movie’s charm comes from the answer to a question kids
may ask from time to time: What would you do if you had superpowers?
Easy. Test them out and show them off.
There is no shortage of humor coming from Billy Batson’s (Asher
Angel) initial response to getting his powers. He and his foster brother,
Freddy (Jack Dylan Glazer), conduct multiple tests to figure out just how
strong he is. They even engage in a little neighborhood do-gooding. Zachary
Levi’s performance could not have been better. He sells the childlike whimsy
perfectly.
That question returns again and again throughout the latter
half of the movie. The answers are, without fail, golden.
What also helps is a very likeable cast. They all seem a
natural fit for their roles. I particularly enjoyed Ian Chen’s (Evan in Fresh Off the Boat) performance as
one of the foster family. He’s an avid video gamer and not averse to making a
Bruce Lee reference.
Kudos to the director, David F. Sandberg, and to the writers,
Henry Gayden and Darren Lemke, for embracing the nerdy and childlike atmosphere
without sacrificing the heartistic elements. A job well done.
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