Shazam! (2019, Zachary Levi, Mark Strong, Asher Angel) – Movie Review

The 2019 DC Comics’ family superhero movie Shazam! is as silly and lame as they come, frustratingly unfunny and unamusing, not to mention totally unexciting. Asher Angel is reasonable company as junior hero Billy Batson, a 14-year-old foster kid, abanoned by his mom, who finds he can turn into the grown-up superhero Shazam by, er, shouting Shazam!

Anyway, suddenly the young teen turns into this infuriatingly unfunny middle-aged character, inventively called Shazam by the way, played without any appeal or charm by Zachary Levi. Shazam is no doubt meant to be a winner but he comes over as a creepy old uncle type. Luckily, though, Levi can, and does frequently, shout Shazam! and we’re back with Billy Batson. All this Shazam! stuff is so daft, random and pointless that it makes you feel like you have landed on an alien planet.

You can’t blame the actors, well not all of them. Mark Strong is a very good actor, but he too comes over as another old duffer as the idiot villain Dr Sivana, and another posh good actor Djimon Hounsou has the duffest of roles as the Wizard. However, Jack Dylan Grazer is to blame for an abrasive turn as hero’s friend Freddy Freeman. He tries hard, way too hard, but this is a cocky, laugh-free performance.

I’ve been trying this shouting Shazam! thing, by the way, and, like the film, it just doesn’t work.

That’s it. I kept waiting for it to finish, but it runs an unbearable 132 minutes, and felt like it would never end. It finally does in the lamest of CGI finishes, and the post main end credit sequence is baffling. Maybe shouting Shazam! could make the movie and now the memory of it disappear. Now that would be magic. If this is meant to be a comic books movie giant leap into comedy, please bring back the doom and gloom!

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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