SHAZAM! (2019) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

shazam! (2019) movie

Genre              |   Action Fantasy

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   120 minutes

Released         |   4 April 2019

cast

​Zachary Levi ... Shazam
Mark Strong ... Dr. Thaddeus Sivana
Asher Angel ... Billy Batson
Jack Dylan Grazer ... Freddy Freeman
​Djimon Hounsou ... The Wizard

director

David F. Sandberg

writer

Henry Gayden ... (screenplay by)
 
Henry Gayden ... (story by) and
Darren Lemke ... (story by)
 
Bill Parker ... (Shazam created by) and
C.C. Beck ... (Shazam created by)

cinematographer

​Maxime Alexandre

music

​Benjamin Wallfisch

film editor

​Michel Aller

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box office result

Worldwide               $? million

Australia                 $? million

North America        $? million

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the best dialogue

​​Freddy Freeman: If you could have one superpower, what would you pick? Everybody chooses flight. You know why?
Billy Batson: So they can fly away from this conversation?

The Wizard: Say my name so that my powers may flow through you.
Billy Batson: But I don't know your name, sir.
The Wizard: Shazam.
[Billy laughs]
The Wizard: SAY IT!

Billy Batson: SHAZAM!

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SHAZAM! (2019) MOVIE IMAGES

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SHAZAM! (2019) STORY SYNOPSIS

​Billy Batson is a streetwise 14-year-old who can magically transform into the adult superhero Shazam simply by shouting out one word. His newfound powers soon get put to the test when he squares off against the evil Dr. Thaddeus Sivana.

SHAZAM! (2019) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 4 April 2019

Pop ​Movee Rating

If you like entertaining movies that have action, humour and heart, then David F. Sandberg's SHAZAM! is the movie for you! 

Billy Batson (Asher Angel) is a young man with a chip on his shoulder…

Placed into foster care at a young age, fifteen year old Billy has some issues with authority. He revels in creating mischief and is already on the radar of local law enforcement.

In an effort to get him on the straight and narrow, Billy is sent to the home of Victor & Rosa Vasquez (Cooper Andrews & Marta Milans), a couple who’ve had a great deal of success at helping other young people in need of a nurturing home environment to understand that life isn’t always hard and lonely.

While the film’s opening prologue, featuring Djimon Hounsou as “The Wizard Shazam”, gets the viewer into the swing of the premise early, it’s the first twenty-five minutes proper of the First Act that establish SHAZAM! as more than just another comic book movie.

Henry Gayden’s screenplay is quite deliberate in taking time to establish the relationship between Billy and his new “family”. Refreshingly, Gayden’s screenplay doesn’t feel the need to thrust the viewer into the thick of the action to justify them getting their money’s worth.

Given the trouble Warner Bros have had in achieving consistent critical and commercial success with the DC characters, the use of Gayden, a writer with only a handful of credits over a decade-long career, was something of a gamble.

In this instance, the gamble has paid off handsomely.

Likewise, David F. Sandberg as the film’s Director…

The Swedish filmmaker rose to prominence in 2013 when his collection of short Horror movies caught the attention of Producer Lawrence Grey, who, in turn, put Sandberg together with writer Eric Heisserer and James Wan.

The result was LIGHTS OUT (2016), a feature film version of one of Sandberg’s earlier short films.

Sandberg went on to direct ANNABELLE: CREATION (2017), part of Wan’s “Conjuring Universe”, scoring both solid reviews and Box Office success.

Even with the success of those films, the leap for Sandberg from the Horror genre, where the collective production budget of his two films was less than $20 million, to SHAZAM!, with an $80 million budget, is a huge step up for the Director.

Recent Hollywood history has a number of cautionary tales where a relatively young filmmaker has experienced small-scale success and has been prematurely handed the opportunity to a large-scale production. Josh Trank’s FANTASTIC FOUR (2015), Gareth Edwards’ ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (2016), along with Phil Lord & Chris Miller on SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY (2018) are all recent examples of filmmakers whose more intimate, personal movies opened the door to huge “Blockbuster” opportunities. Unfortunately, the “opportunity” turned out to be a less-than-enjoyable experience as Studio pressure overrode the pursuit of artistic merit.

Fortunately, Sandberg appears to have navigated the step-up and delivered a “Studio franchise tentpole” movie that successfully blends art and commerce.

Gayden’s screenplay taps into topics such online gaming and YouTube fame to give the story relevance for a contemporary youth audience, but at its core, SHAZAM! is very much a film that encourages the viewer embrace family values, take care of those who take care of you and be prepared to view the diversity of life as something that help, not hinder.

This Billy Batson’s arc...

Given Billy is actually the trickiest part to play, Asher Angel does a pretty good job. Billy starts of being a bit of jerk (born out of his circumstance), but the story requires the character to walk-back from this and accept the support of those around him while simultaneously coming-to-terms with becoming a Superhero! It’s not an easy role, but Angel is well and truly up to the task.

The unsung hero of SHAZAM! is Jack Dylan Grazer…

Imagine combining the Eric Cartman and Jimmy Valmer characters from SOUTH PARK into one and giving that character a Superhero as their best friend. That pretty much sums of Grazer’s Freddie Freeman.

Freddy is one of Victor & Rosa’s foster kids and without the character, SHAZAM! would be an infinitely lesser film.

Freddy’s the lense through which Jayden's screenplay mines the fertile ground of the aforementioned youth audience. At first, Billy is quite dismissive of Freddy, but, upon his transformation, he comes to realise that he needs his help to navigate the change. However, Grazer’s best work is not with Angel…

Zachary Levi is SHAZAM!

Levi absolutely nails the character.

Imagine a fifteen year old boy with the ability to transform into a muscled-up, adult man body with superhuman powers. Fifteen year old boys struggle to be fifteen year old boys at the best of times. Sandberg lets Levi have a huge amount of fun with this element of the character and a vast amount of the film’s humour comes from the absurdity of seeing a grown man in a red spandex suit doing things you’d expect from a teenage boy.

That’s not to suggest anyone isn’t taking their work seriously.

The reason why SHAZAM! works so well is the balance Sandberg strikes between the film’s action and humour. 

Unlike the Ryan Reynolds DEADPOOL movies, Sandberg never allows any of his characters (especially Levi) to break the fourth wall and wink knowingly at the viewer. To a certain extent, Sandberg assumes that his viewer will be familiar with many of the visual cues he offers up as observations throughout the film. Some of these cues translate as genuinely funny gags, but the humour is based on the viewer’s knowledge of such things and, given the SHAZAM! is pitched at the young adult segment of cinema patrons, viewer awareness will be high.

To provide some balance to the Billy, Freddy & Shazam triumvirate, Mark Strong delivers yet another strong supporting performance as the villainous Thaddeus Sivanna. 

Strong is no stranger to movies based on comic book characters and knows the type of performance required to strike the balance between “Dramatic” and “Scenery-chewing”. As Sivanna, he’s an awkward try-hard, who, despite his brilliance, has allowed his life to be defined by childhood rejection. This rejection affects every fibre of his being and he’s now consumed by the envious desire to unleash Hell on Earth!

The supporting players are just as impressive…

Grace Fulton, Ian Chen, Jovan Armand and Faith Herman are the performers who comprise the kid collective under the foster care of Victor & Rosa Vasquez. They’re an eclectic bunch, but they help provide the film’s heart as the “family” that Billy’s never had.

The only criticism of SHAZAM! is the running time.

At 132 minutes, the film is about 15 minutes too long. The film’s finale could have certainly done with some trimming and some of the Second Act scenes expanding upon Shazam’s abilities could have been truncated to tighten the plot.

SHAZAM! is a welcome continuation of form for Warner Bros and its DC movies. The film won’t do the monster Box Office of AQUAMAN (2018), but, of all the mainstream movies between now and the end of April (when AVENGERS: ENDGAME arrives), it should find the broadest audience; especially with the Easter break arriving in the midst of its release window. 

David F. Sandberg has delivered a film that is a classic Superhero origin story, harkening as far back to its cinematic spiritual inspiration, Richard Donner’s SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE (1978). Filmmaking technique has progressed a long way during the intervening forty-one years, but the fundamental question remains to gauge the success (or otherwise) of a comic book film…

“Do you believe a man can fly?”

As far as SHAZAM! is concerned, just say the word...

SHAZAM! MOVIE (2019) USEFUL LINKS

Shazam! (film) - Wikipedia
​Shazam! (2019) - IMDb
​Shazam! (2019) - Rotten Tomatoes

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