Shazam
From teen to superhero and this kid can’t even shave yet! Just say the “S” word!
Director: David F. Sandberg
Lead Cast:
Zachary Levi, Asher Angel, Mark Strong, Jack Dylan Grazer
Screenwriter: Henry Gayden Producers:
Peter Safran, David Witz Editor: Michel Aller
Musical Director:
Benjamin Wallfisch Cinematographer:
Maxime Alexandre
Genre: Fantasy, Super Heroes
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Location:
Pennsylvania, USA; Ontario, Canada
Running Time: 2 hr 11 min
Technical assessment: 3.5 ★★★✬✩
Moral assessment: 3.5 ★★★✬✩
CINEMA rating: V13
MTRCB rating: PG13
Two young boys lead parallel lives. Billy (Asher Angel) wanders away from his mother in an amusement park and gets lost. He ends up in one orphanage, then another, and another, in a constant search for his mother. Eventually he finds out that she turned around when she saw him with the the cops that day at the park, because she — a single mother — couldn’t take the responsibility of raising him. Billy realizes his only family now, the one that genuinely embraces him, is not his blood relative but his foster family. The other boy, Thaddeus (Ethan Pugiotto), is slammed by his father and bullied by his brother for being a weakling. Fate takes him to a temple where he is put to test: can he be guardian of an all-powerful staff and supernatural sphere that restrains the Seven Deadly Sins? He fails. Billy ends up in the same temple. The dying wizard, running out of options, impels Billy to take the job. Billy becomes the accidental superhero Shazam (Zachary Levi). Thaddeus becomes the evil Dr. Sivana (Mark Strong) who wants to seize power and rule the world.
Shazam’s absurdities make us laugh, helplessly in some scenes. And they should be appreciated as that: absurd. Because when we give them further thought, we suck the fun out of them. There’s a disconnect between the young Billy who is secretive and cautious and the flippant almost irresponsible Shazam that he becomes. What accounts for that change, the story does not say. Nor does it explain why Thaddeus’ father is so cruel to him. We watched Levi and Strong in other movies, and they deliver. In Shazam, however, their acting is contrived. What we bleat about the most is this: Shazam has the power to generate lightning, but the screen does not show that blinding flash of electricity. The movie has a shortage of lighting. CGI also is a bit crude, the monsters look straight out of a horror theme park.
So what’s the value in watching Shazam? For one, it shows that the ability to give parental love and nurture is not exclusive to biological parents — foster parents can, too. Shazam plays up the role of family in cultivating character and interdependence. It demonstrates how family can shape children into the kind of adults they will become by portraying two parallel lives of the boys who are both rejected and abandoned. Billy finds love and belonging not with his mother, but in his foster family, and once he realized that, he “shazammed” into a superhero with a big heart. Thaddeus, so wanting of the family that nurtures and protects, grew up greedy, envious and hateful. Shazam also subtly warns about power coming too fast too soon in the hands of youngsters without benefit of direction from elders. Now be warned that the opening scene showing Thaddeus being castigated and insulted by his father and the ensuing car accident is most dreadful. It plays up the guilt that may be magnified in the mind of some children. — MOE
