Despite my dizzyingly low expectations and complete ignorance about the headline hero, Shazam! is the first truly joyful DC film I’ve seen in a long time. (I hesitate to say “comic book film” because of the recent experiment with the multiverse by Marvel.) I was advised through a teenage friend of Friend that we would be bored by the first twenty minutes of the film and then it would pick up, and I found that not to be the case. There are a lot of clever bends in those opening scenes: fun with the soundtrack, Djimon Hounsou as a big ol’ wizard, and Mark Strong refusing to age a day past thirty and struggling to wrap his mouth around an American accent.
The turn was unexpected for someone who has not familiarized themselves with the comics (Friend confirmed this for me last night after the show, too), which I think means that the direction did not feel the need to treat the audience like it was stupid, yet it doesn’t feel unearned or disorienting like so many dei ex machina. Vague spoilers: the nature of the turn stays in line with my desire to see 1) the hero not overcome the villain because “he wants it more” and 2) the hero finding himself on unequal advantage over the antagonist. The film did a great job of maintaining symmetry and power equity, which kept stakes high (unlike in a film like Cpt. Marvel, where the fully realized power of the heroine removes the concern for her safety. There are decisions of comedy being made in the case of Cpt Marvel, but it still means that her fight sequences are not really about worrying that she’ll lose).
Shazam! did a wonderful job of avoiding cultural amnesia of super heroes and not bending over backwards to integrate its story into a shared universe with the pretty toxic missteps of Snyder’s Batman and Superman franchises or the more popular Aguahombre and Miramujer-centered movies. Because Shazam! is allowed to stand (or, perhaps more accurately, crouch in a cardboard box under a highway) on its own, it doesn’t have to contend with Easter eggs or momentum-killing side quests or underwhelming cameo send-ups. The film is manageable in its simplicity, fresh in its depiction of foster care, if not of youth culture more broadly (instead here it leans back on high school angst, impish liquor store hijinks, pervy titty bar tropes without bothering to get too insightful or specific.
The film’s use of Jack Dylan Grazer (of Stephen King’s It remake) to play the fast-talking and very charming sidekick/manager of Shazam is a mixed bag. Freeman is portrayed as having a physical disability that requires him to move around with the use of a crutch, and at times his character’s disability seems like it’s used as a hallpass to make jokes about his vulnerable he is as a “cripple”. Even with the eye rolls and tongue-in-cheek gags, it does feel a little stomach-churning to hear this nice kid put on a kind of minstrel show. That being said, the film does a fine job at other times of making his disability part of a more universal metaphor of invisibility and the sense of helplessness that many disadvantaged youth feel.
Shazam! is, as many reviews have pointed out, an excellent approximation of a Marvel movie, without much of the baggage that Marvel movies have 20 films in and counting. It’s got some laugh out loud moments an an excellent cast of characters, hopefully turning the page on a stale formula of grittiness from previous DC movies.
