Shazam!

Shazam! – Orphan Billy Batson, still searching for his birth mother, ends up in a foster home in Philadelphia. One day while saving a fellow orphan from bullies he is summoned to another dimension by the wizard Shazam to be his champion and to save the world from the evil Thaddeus Sivana. Every time he utters the word “Shazam” he transforms into an adult superhero. But can he grow up emotionally as well as physically in order to rise to the challenge?

Shazam! (2019) – Director: David F. Sandberg

By Warner Bros. – Warner Bros., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60344684

Rating: 12

Running Length: 132 mins

Starring: Zachary Levi, Mark Strong, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer, Djimon Hounsou

Genre: Superhero, Fantasy, Comedy

REVIEW: SHAZAM!

After the grimness of their early Superman and Batman films, DC continues to lighten the tone; after Aquaman this may be their most family-friendly and purely fun film to date. It’s a wild, albeit slightly uneven mash-up of Superman, Big and The Dumping Ground (if you’re familiar with British kids’ TV). The ‘child suddenly in an adult body’ comedy is mostly very funny, even if, as in Big, the adult actor seems to be playing slightly younger than his supposedly 14-year-old character. But in general the performances are very engaging. It’s also good at exploring how a teenager would really react to suddenly gaining superpowers and how it’s not so easy to summon up the courage to use them to help others, especially when you’ve spent most of your life alone and isolated. It’s as much a film about family and community as anything else, which gives the “with great power comes great responsibility” theme an added emotional impact and depth compared to some other comic book hero films.

Mark Strong makes a strong (pun intended) impression as the villain despite not being given much to work with (his motivation is basically ‘Daddy didn’t love me’), but his hench-creatures, scary as they are, could have been developed a bit more. They’re supposed to represent the seven deadly sins, but they’re pretty much indistinguishable.

There are some great gags poking fun at superhero and movie conventions, helped by the fact that Billy’s friend is a big comics geek, allowing him to explain all the rules of the genre as they go. There’s also a lovely surprise development in the third act which I hope they explore further in the sequel, although the climactic fight scene overall dragged on a bit too long. But overall it’s full of the kind of youthful energy and sense of fun that also made ‘Spiderman: Homecoming‘ so enjoyable.

CONTENT: IS ‘SHAZAM!’ SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN?

In the film’s opening scene three people in a car are involved in a sudden and violent car crash. No injury is shown, but afterwards we see the adult driver lying on the ground, with some blood on his face. Later we learn that he was paralysed and ends up in a wheelchair.

A woman presses her hand against a door with magic symbols. She suddenly bursts into flames and turns to ash as she screams in pain.

A boy in crutches is gently nudged by a slowly moving car, and falls to the ground. The driver then comes out and starts to hit him. His friend saves him by hitting the bully with his crutch.

When Billy meets the wizard, the wizard tells him “put your hands on my staff” (meaning his magic staff). Billy looks disgusted and says “Ew. Gross!”

In various scenes the superhero’s new powers are tested by his young friend. He holds up a “do not try this at home” card in front of his camera to warn his YouTube viewers, before performing various experiments such as hitting him with heavy objects and attempting to set him on fire to test his invulnerability. Later he is repeatedly shot at by criminals but the bullets bounce off him and cause him no harm.

Billy also uses his new adult appearance to try out a few “adult” behaviours. He buys beer from a convenience store and tries it alongside his teenage friend, but they hate the taste and spit it out immediately. He also enters a “gentleman’s club’ out of curiosity. It is not made explicit what he sees inside so this may go over younger children’s heads, although his friend, waiting outside, asks him if he saw any “titties”. Later Billy and his young friends accidentally teleport into the same club. All we see is them exiting the door from the exterior. The young girl’s eyes are being covered so that she can’t see what’s inside. One boy hints he may be gay because the strippers “aren’t really his thing.”

In one very intense and violent scene a man enters a conference room full of people at the top of a tall building. He throws one man crashing through the window to his death. He then releases demons that bite the head off one man (although the camera cuts away before any blood or injury is seen). The rest of them are killed but most of this is seen only partially through a frosted window, although we hear screams and see some people pressed up against the glass as they try to escape. Throughout the film the demon characters are seen in close up, threatening various characters, and their design makes them quite intense and scary for younger children.

The protagonist is constantly searching for the mother who lost him at the fairground when he was young. We see the event in flashback and the small boy is distressed as he gets lost. Later he finds her and there is an emotional and, for him, disappointing confrontation where he realises that she doesn’t want him back in her life.

In confrontations between the hero and villain there are extended fight scenes, usually involving flying into each other, wrestling and punching. There are cries of pain but no injury is shown other than a brief shot of a bloody nose, as both participants are super-strong and resistant to injury.

A minor character appears in a TV interview, and many of the words are bleeped out, although it seems evident that he’s saying variations on the F-word.

CAN I SEE A CLIP?

VERDICT: IS ‘SHAZAM!’ FOR KIDS?

A light-hearted and fun superhero comedy but with a few scary moments make Shazam! suitable for children over the age of 10

• Violence: 2/5 (characters attacked by demons, school children beaten by bullies, two super-powered beings tussle and hit each other)
• Emotional Distress: 1/5 (the protagonist confronts his mother who had abandoned him)
• Fear Factor: 3/5 (repeated threats and violence from scary demon characters, children placed in danger)
• Sexual Content: 1/5 (character enters a “gentleman’s club”, but nothing inside is shown)
• Bad Language: 2/5 (Occasional uses of “shit”, “hell”, “ass”, and “crap”)
• Dialogue: 1/5 (brief but subtle references to strippers)
• Other notes: deals with orphans and abandonment, adolescence and the importance of family.

Words by Simon Litton