Director: David F. Sandberg
Screenplay: Henry Gayden, from a story by Henry Gayden and Darren Lemke, based on a character created by Bill Parker and C. C. Beck for DC Comics
Starring: Zachary Levi, Mark Strong, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer, Djimon Hounsou
Running Time: 130 minutes
Genre: Fantasy, action adventure, comedy, superhero
In present day Philadelphia, 14 year old foster kid Billy Batson (Angel) runs into trouble with the law while searching for his birth mother. He is placed in a group foster home, run by kindly Victor (Cooper Andrews) and Rosa Vasquez (Marta Milans). Billy reluctantly befriends nerdy superhero fan Freddy (Grazer), although he is wary about getting close to anyone. One day, while on the subway, Billy is transported to a strange temple run bay an ancient wizard named Shazam (Hounsou), who has been searching for one truly good person who is "pure of heart" and who can become his champion and defeat the powerful Seven Deadly Sins. When Billy says the name "Shazam" he is transformed into an adult superhero (Levi).
This is an enjoyable superhero film, which comes across at times as a superpowered remake of Big (1988), which is referenced in one scene. It adopts a lighter, more comedic, tone than most of the other recent movies based on DC Comics. However it is darker and more gritty than it initially appears, and has surprising emotional heft at times. There is a lot of fun in the scenes where Billy is testing out his new superpowers, and the story is enjoyable and satisfying. The performances are good, and the child actors really work well together, with Asher Angel and Jack Dylan Grazer being particularly good. Zachary Levi is fun and charismatic as Billy's superhero form, and Mark Storng makes a suitably menacing villain. Djimon Hounsou provides the appropriate gravitas as the ancient mystic.
With a running time of over two hours, the film does feel stretched, and the climax does fall into the almost inevitable trap of superhero films of feeling like an extended special effects showreel. It also has the problem of being a superhero origin story and having to hit the prerequisite beats to establish the characters, their powers and their world. Another thing that I liked about the film was that, while it is set in the shared DC Comics Universe, and there are references to the other characters, the film is pretty much self-contained. You don't need to have seen any other films in order to enjoy this.
Just a note: There are two post credit sequences. One in the middle of the credits and one at the very end.
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