Review of Shazam! (2019) by Greenisgood — 14 Jul 2019

Honestly speaking it was an average movie... but I would rather take this over the Snyder-verse any day and for that I add one extra point to the score of this movie. TL;DR - Even at average Still better than BvS or Man of Steel.

The Good.

The acting all around was good. The Child actors did not grind my gears too much so I know they were really good. Shazam as a hero was OK aside from a few gripes I will get to later. The darker undertones to Billy's story was decently complex and much appreciated to see them not go either full silly or full depressive and the movie was striking a balance more often than not. Mark Strong was a high point for me as an actor, since he seemed to be having the most fun getting into the skin of a obsessed whacko besides the fact that the villain was written bland and he did the best he was given. The Seven Deadly Sins had some very interesting designs, very Lovecraft inspired; though the camera seemed to shy away from them which kind of confused me.

The Bad.

DCEU still seems to be having a hard time getting their heroes in a satisfying ' Hero helps the civilian's Scene' aside from Wonder Woman who nailed that, this is the only area I felt this movie was lacking.

And Since This IS a super hero movie it was quite the issue for me as I was starving for some proper hero action from Shazam through out my watch. I do get he is a kid and all but living the hard-ship life we see Billy has been through any normal person through similar experience will have an itch to be helpful at some point; we needed to see such scenes before the climax, instead of dumping it all in the end.

This does not mean the fun child like stuff we see Billy/Shazam doing should be cut out or replaced, rather balance it out more so the main lead does not come off unlikeable... But it drags on until he saves a few people from one instance of trouble he himself stupidly creates and of course for the climax, small meaningful heroics acts were needed since we already establish early on that Batman & Superman are a thing in this movie.

The sins were also a missed opportunity since taking something like that and giving no individual characterizations to them seems like a conscious decision and I refuse to believe a writer would not jump at the opportunity to have their own spin on The Seven Great Evils, given Strong's Character as the Main Villain was pretty bland and one note.

Maybe the sequel will get the hero action right this time around as we have a plethora of new heroes as well as the origin story out of the way and we can now see a more balanced better written story for the next one.