‘Shazam’ is an odd ball. In the spate of superhero movies ‘Shazam’ presented a different view to superheroism. The first trailer was funny and interesting but when further teasers and trailers dropped, I had reservation. It is the Easter long weekend, so I thought I will see whether it managed to deliver something unique and interesting.
Unique it was. Interesting? I have reservations about.
By that I did not mean that it is a bad movie. It is decent, but for me its over ambitious attempt to present something unique had weighed itself down. ‘Shazam’ itself is a unique character, so from my point of view if you managed to exploit that, it is a natural progression for the movie to develop. However, it is the attempt of mixing a lot of elements to please a variety of audiences that broke the innate uniqueness of the character, and the film itself. And I think that contributed a lot to the roots of the director David F Sandberg.
‘Shazam’ is about a child becoming a superhero and those the quirkiness and innocence exhibited by the superhero himself. I think Zachary Levi was a perfect casting choice as he exhibited that kind of man with a child’s heart thing perfectly. In no scenes that you felt him acting out. He exhibited the same mannerism with its 14-year-old counterpart played by Asher Angel and that was hilarious. Asher Angel as the pre-Shazam Billy Batson was ok. He did a decent job but there wasn’t a lot of interesting materials for him to work with. But when opportunities came, such as when he met the Wizard and the scene of his reunion with his mother, he was great. I felt that should he be given more interesting materials to work with he will be great. Jack Dylan Grazer’s Freddy Freeman for me was most of the time annoying. If that’s the point of the character, then he did a good job. But I personally did not enjoy his screen time at all. Most of the time I wish I could just fast forward his scenes but as I said previously, the materials in the movie weren’t particularly solid.
There is a huge supporting cast in the movie, and I think attempting to provide enough materials with everyone while morphing the product to suit the director’s style had made it a challenging balancing act. The other kids in the foster house in my personal opinion are a lot more interesting, but then they were supporting-supporting cast, so their lacklustre material didn’t really help the actors to bring those characters to their full lives. I wish I actually see more of Mary and Pedro, whom are a lot more interesting than Freddy. But that is life, you can’t have every single character as a promising side-kick to the superhero.
However, one of the main issues with me about the movie is its attempt to incorporate lots of B grade horror elements into the movie while trying to make it a ‘family friendly’ film. I understand that David F Sandberg, with a back catalogue of ‘Lights Out’ and ‘Annabelle’ wants to make his marks on the movie. However, the way he did it did not work at all. James Wen of ‘Aquaman’ did the same but it was done within a proper context. For David F Sandberg, he tried to turned promising scenes into horror flicks that were completely out of genre with the rest of the movie. Without giving too much away, there were scenes that I truly felt ‘Really? Do you have to do it this way?’. Those scenes were great if they were not part of ‘Shazam’ but when they were within the ‘Shazam’ universe, they were just completely out of place. And that, while showed the roots of the director, is not particularly doing justice to the movie that he was making. And for that I was truly disappointed.
The DC Extended Universe (DCEU) is in an awkward position. It is not going anywhere but still DC and Warner cannot ignore the fact that there is / was something called the DCEU. And this shows in Shazam. While the movie had moved to a real-life world of Philadelphia it had to acknowledge the existence of other characters and their events. This made the setting a lot more awkward as you have to wonder ‘Are they? Are they not?’. I mean ‘Justice League’ already addressed the fact that Russia existed in their fictional world, and ‘Acquaman’ had further distanced itself, but ‘Shazam’ seemed to have pulled this further away from the DC fictional world. What DCEU lacks is a clear identity, and by doing that in the subsequent movies DC and Warner Bros are not doing themselves any favour, unless they are trying to subtly kill off the whole DCEU. But then what is left with the movie franchise? For me it felt like DC and Warner Bros have really lost their ways in the whole afterthought DCEU thing.
‘Shazam’ by no means is a bad movie. It has its moments, but for me, there were too many dead times littering around. It constantly felt like I need to pick something I don’t like out of the dish to enjoy the food, and that is not a satisfying experience. I wish there was a more focused approach to the movie, from script to direction to presentation, so ‘Shazam’ could stay true to its identity while serving as a redeeming element for the ill-fated DCEU. At the moment it is just nothing but a decent movie that could probably score a pleasant box office. It didn’t help either DC or Warner Bros moving forward. It truly felt like a missed opportunity.
