Shazam! (2019)

“Shazam!” (2019) opens with a boy being teleported to some kind of temple, then tested.
The “test” was a bearded space wizard yelling insanity at him, then getting tempted by the embodiment of the seven deadly sins. Unsurprisingly, the boy fails the test, and the space wizard screams that he’s not good enough. Not a great method of revealing a test score, and doesn’t exactly do wonders for the boy’s self esteem.

Fast forward 30 years and we’re met with orphan Billy Batson, who’s being sent to the umpteenth foster home, complete with a rag-tag group of other foster kids, ranging from small to large (best guess: ages 10-18). 
Billy, having spent years looking for his biological mother, is a bit of a dick. It’s not actually explained why, as there’s not a particularly tragic back-story other than “he’s an orphan,” so that seems to be just what the director decided on for his character arc. 
I was pleasantly surprised that the group of kids were handled really well by the script - none of them got on my nerves and none of them spent extended periods screaming. They were well utilized as characters to help the story progress.

Meanwhile, original boy-turned-man, Dr. Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong), finds his way back to the temple and purposefully takes the sins’ side, thus becoming the villain. This was an outstanding casting choice, as Strong consistently plays the antagonist role better than anyone else, and seems to like doing it (otherwise I doubt he’d do it so often).
This turn of events leads the space wizard to summon Billy (Asher Angel) to the temple and bestow upon him the powers of Shazam. It’s never clarified if “shazam” is the activating word, the nom de plumof the role, or the title of that particular brand of magic, though I guess that’s not particularly relevant, just confusing to write about.

As with all superhero origin movies we’ve seen in the last 11 years, there was an extended “learn how to use your powers” montage. It was probably about 3-days of in-movie time for Billy to fully master the powers of shazam. Not particularly original, as it bore a lot of similarities to Tony Stark mastering components of his first suit from “Iron Man” (2008), but was told from the perspective of two young teen boys, so there was a level of excitement that kept it fresh.
It was also entertaining in that the activating word turned 15 year old Billy into a 33 year old Zachary Levi. 
I would like to know if Levi was wearing a muscle suit or if he actually got ripped for the role.

I was pleasantly surprised at how funny this movie was - there were multiple scenes that actually made me laugh out loud, with much of it being regular dialogue between Billy and his new brother Freddy, while avoiding becoming a quippy mess. There was even an outstanding running gag between the two as they tried to determine a good catchphrase for Shazam to use when he’s out saving the day.

It’s weird that the shazam powers(?) that Shazam has are apparently due to straight-up magic, but it makes about as much sense in the DC Cinematic Universe where Themyscira was cloaked from the world, or that the Green Lantern Corps is weak against the color yellow.

This movie was released at the beginning of April, but took place during the days leading up to Christmas; not that Christmas was particularly relevant to telling the story, that was just the seasonal backdrop they picked.
Which, if I’m not mistaken, makes “Shazam!” as much a Christmas movie as “Die Hard” (1988) which was released on 12 July and takes place on 25 December and is also not actually related to Christmas.

My biggest disappointment in this movie was the CGI. It was surprisingly bad.
If this had come from a lesser studio with a smaller budget, I would absolutely ignore this detail. 
But it was made by Warner Brothers, which made “Aquaman” (2018) and “Wonder Woman” (2017), both of which had excellent renderings, so there’s really no excuse for “Shazam!” to have been anything less than flawless, but here we are.

There was an unfortunate scene near the end where other people gain shazam powers and then just use them, no training montage required. It took Billy 3 days to figure it out, but these new folks mastered them in mere minutes. This is the same problem we had with General Zod’s team from “Man of Steel” (2013), where Supes spent his entire life learning how to function in Earth’s atmosphere, but Zod and friends seemed to figure it out by accident.
It’s another one of those “internal consistency” issues.

The music was almost non-existent. There were a few places where there was some generic triumphant-sounding stuff, but nothing thematic and nothing consistent.
There was, however, one scene during the final act where there were four notes from the Avengers sound track. I realize how nitpicky that sounds, but movie sound tracks are my favorite thing - I recognized it immediately and am annoyed that they included it; this isn’t even the right cinematic universe!

An odd choice for the film: the seven deadly sins were portrayed as demons, which… fine. Sure. Whatever. Gluttony had a giant extra mouth in its stomach, which made that one pretty obvious, but the other six were indistinguishable from each other; they were just grey monsters. Even Shazam pointed this out: “And Lust, which I was expecting to be wayhotter.” The director could have named them after any seven vices, or just generic demon names, and it would have had the same effect on actual story line, as its not like the creatures we saw actually did anything related to their namesakes.

The final scene of the movie had an entertaining cameo from another DC superhero, along with the first three notes of their classic theme song. But it only showed that hero from the neck down, which tells me they couldn’t actually snag any of the actors who have ever played him.

The end-credits scene showed… something. Clearly it was a setup to a sequel and/or some kind of DC-Shazam-focused extended universe. I’m sure if I was a fan of the “Shazam” comic book series, it would have made a lot more sense.

Collectively, this was an entertaining movie.
I would have been quite happy to see it in theaters, but I don’t feel like you’d miss out on a lot by not seeing it there either.
There were a few jabs at the superhero genre, indicating a pleasant level of self-awareness, though nothing close to Deadpool-levels of wall-breaking.
It’s another positive addition to the DC Cinematic Universe after the collective failings of their recent Superman and Batman movies, and fits nicely with the successes of Aquaman and Wonder Woman.
And Mark Strong as the villain was perfect. I couldn’t have asked for a better bad guy.