In the race to get those super hero movie bucks, D.C. lags far behind the huge Marvel comic franchise. But lately they’ve been doing better (see the Wonder Woman movie) and now we have Shazam, a very different sort of origins story about a 14 year old boy named Billy Batson who lost his Mom at the Fair, wanders around, meets a Wizard who is concerned about the unleashing of the seven deadly sins in the world, and adopts the Wizard’s name and powers. But….. it takes a while to figure out what one’s super powers are…. and how to use them. And you know the old adage— ‘all power corrupts’ and when given to an already narcissistic teenager, then look out!
While there are some recognizable movie veterans in the film (e.g. Mark Strong as the bad guy, but Djimon Hounsou is unrecognizable as the Wizard) mostly this is a film with younger actors who are not well known, and the whole feel of the movie is that is aimed at and about teenagers, particularly teenage boys wishing they had super powers.
I went into this movie expecting it to have as its theme ‘may the farce be with you’, in other words, expecting a spoof. The trailers gave that impression. But this is not entirely the nature of the film. It has a serious moral theme—- love and family are good, the seven deadly sins and rampant narcissism are bad. This film is 130 minutes long, and will look like a short subject compared to the 3 hour plus long next Avengers film coming out at the end of this month. This is the current top rated film on Rotten Tomatoes (92%), and it is not bad, especially as a film for families. Yes the seven deadly sin demons are gross, sort of a cross between the Ghostbusters badies and Harry Potters demon vapors, but we wouldn’t want them to be appealing— now would we? This is far from a classic film, and it doesn’t have the zing of other super hero quirky films like Guardians of the Galaxy One. But it has some good and funny moments, and is not bad as a diversion on a rainy day.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In