directed by David F. Sandberg
written by Henry Gayden and Darren Lemke
Around this time last year, when the lights came on after Avengers: Infinity War, my daughter told me that she had observed a little boy of around eight or nine years crying into his dad's shoulder, presumably because one of his favorite heroes had turned to dust (I'm betting it was Spider-Man). Being the 40-plus-year-old man-child who's been reading comics for the better part of three decades, of course I had a laugh, knowing that most of the "deaths" in Infinity War probably have all the permanence of the tide, as did both of my older, more comics-savvy kids. Thinking about it afterwards, though, I came to realize how a great many of these comic-book based movies nowadays really aren't for kids anymore, or at least, not primarily for kids but rather for that coveted late-teens to mid-thirties segment of the market (more colloquially known as men-children) that make enough money to watch movies over and over again.
It was a long-running debate among one segment of fandom, for example, that Marvel movies are for kids while DC movies are for adults, a notion inspired in part by Christopher Nolan's decidedly dark, noir-inspired take on the Batman movies and Zack Snyder's poor attempt to channel that vibe into his own take on the Superman mythos and the eventual DC Extended Universe. I could go on as to why the proponents of that argument are wrong (and maybe I will, someday) but in truth, it's all become moot and academic now since the executives at Warner Brothers, the parent company of DC have apparently gone and said, "what the hell, let's just eighty-six all that dark crap and make movies that are more kid-friendly."
The drastic shift in overall tone of DC movies from "dark" to "light" started as early as last year's colorful adventure Aquaman, and arguably even 2017's Justice League but while the latter was basically a sloppy retrofit mandated by studio execs who basically wanted their year-end bonus, Aquaman was a from-the-ground-up change in approach to the way Warner Brothers made superhero movies and an effective abandonment of Snyder's overall tone. I can't comment one way or the other on what I thought of Aquaman because I was at that point so disenchanted with Warner Bros' DC movies (thanks to Justice League) that I didn't even bother to watch it.
In the case of Shazam, however, I was hooked from the very first trailer, because this movie looked pretty darned funny.
Teenager Billy Batson (Asher Angel) has one goal in life: to find his mother (Caroline Palmer), from whom he was separated as a toddler while they were at a fair. To this end, he has fled one foster home after another, and even gone to the extent of hijacking police databases just to find people with his last name. His last attempt to find his mother ends with him being placed in a group foster home run by Victor and Rosa Vasquez (Cooper Andrews and Marta Milans) where he meets foster kids Pedro (Jovan Armand), Eugene (Ian Chen), Darla (Faithe Herman), Mary (Grace Fulton) and Freddie (Jack Dylan Grazer), all of whom he views as a distraction while he continues his search. However, when he is recruited by an aging wizard (Djimon Hounsou) to fight against the Seven Deadly Sins, an ancient cabal of evil that has escaped into the world and taken control of the deranged Dr. Sivana (Mark Strong), Billy will have to take on the mantle of Shazam (Zachary Levi) a hero with the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles and the speed of Mercury. Before all of that, though, Billy, together with his new guru and expert on all things superhero Freddy, intends to have a little fun first.
This may seem strange, coming from a "Marvel guy" like myself, but in all honesty, I haven't seen a movie embrace its campy comic book origins this gleefully since the first Spider-Man movie way back in 2002, and it is great fun to watch. Zachary Levi, last seen in a comic-book-based movie getting murdered in Thor: Ragnarok, is the perfect embodiment of the super-powered man-child and even though he still hasn't totally convinced me that his suit isn't even just a little padded, his exuberant performance makes me extremely glad Dwayne Johnson chose to play Black Adam instead of this character. He's basically pure joy to watch, and his pairing with Jack Dylan Grazer's uber superhero nerd Freddie is the stuff of comedic genius, particularly in the scenes in which the two of them are testing out Billy's newly-gained superpowers. If anything, Angel's iteration of Billy is the weak link here, not because he's not a good actor, (and in fact, he is quite appropriately earnest in his performance and gives the movie its heart), but because the seriousness with which he vests his performance creates a slight disconnect between his Billy and the musclebound adult-bodied counterpart that Levi plays. It's a minor quibble, though, if I'm perfectly honest, because the team of Levi and Grazer is simply dynamite. While comparisons to the similarly irreverent Deadpool make some sense I submit that this movie is very much its own thing. There is a bit of a jarring shift in tone in one especially violent scene involving the film's antagonists and a bunch of executives in a board room, but director Sandberg and his writers, for the most part, make a properly lighthearted movie.
Another minus for this movie is the computer-generated imagery, which is a bit on the weak side by today's standards but which is nonetheless forgivable given the relatively frugal budget and the fact that the movie is basically just embraces its glorious camp in much the way Deadpool did. The CGI is mostly poured into the Seven Deadly Sins as well as the climactic fight scenes and is really nothing to write home about, but the storytelling is so effective that it's easy to forgive the filmmakers this little misstep.
It also helps that the film steers clear of the world-ending stakes and keeps things relatively intimate, like the message at the film's heart about the importance of finding one's family, including in places where one might not expect to find it.
Finally, one of the film's biggest assets, in my opinion, is that it is basically a spiritual remake of the Tom Hanks/Penny Marshall comedy Big, which I loved as a kid, and which the movie directly references during on the fight scenes between Shazam and Dr. Sivana. Sure, Marvel has had great success with (most of) its Spider-Man movies, which also feature a kid as a hero, but there's nonetheless something genuinely refreshing about this take on the kid-as-superhero concept, and if I'm honest, I'm ready for a whole lot of more of these, for as long as they keep those belly laughs coming.
8/10
No comments:
Post a Comment