Shazam (David F. Sandberg, 2019)

Teenager Billy Batson (Asher Angel) has been in and out of foster homes most of his life, ever since his mother disappeared when he was a child. Determined to be re-united with her, he has been willing to break any and all rules to find her.

Out of options after his latest gambit failed, Billy has to deal with a new foster family, a new school, and - after an encounter with a dying wizard (Djimon Hounsou) - the fact that he has transformed into a super-powered 30-something (Zachary Levi) and an angry bald man with a glowing eye (Mark Strong) wants to fight him for some reason.

It might be an effect of my disdain for prior DC movies, but I found this movie to be a delight.

There are no other words for it. After all the nonsense of the Zach Snyder trilogy, this movie feels like a great response to the relentless monotone of Man of Steel - here, the tone is multifaceted to reflect the subject matter and the story.  

Zachary Levi, so winning in Chuck, is great as the boyish superhero. Is he playing way younger than his childhood counterpart? Yes. Did I care? No! It is great to see him finally get a vehicle for his talents.

I also loved how clear the movie's theme was. Dr Sivana (Strong) and Billy are searching for acceptance from missing parental figures - Sivana's search is ultimately about power - having the ability to finally have supremacy over his domineering father. 

Meanwhile, Billy is searching for his mother, the only family he wants to be a part of. 

Sivana's quest is a tale of machismo pushed to its most monstrous extreme, while Billy sees the limits of being a loner when his fantasy of reuniting with his mother crash into reality. The movie is ultimately about the families we make for ourselves - when Billy finally accepts his new family, he is able to defeat Sivana.

The movie's style and tone were interesting: there is a brutality to some of the violence that surprised me - the opening car crash is horrifying - yet it fits as part of the story-telling.

 The diffference with something like Zack Snyder's entire filmography, is that the choices here felt like a way for the filmmakers to translate the comic book's origins in the Great Depression into contemporary terms.

It means the movie feels more grounded, which makes Shazam the character stick out more.

The presentation of the foster home and Billy’s new family really won me over - there is a sense of community and shared history to these scenes, with each of the kids given their own personalities and arcs. While the story is centred around a single super-powered being, the film places an emphasis on the importance of familial and communal bonds. Alone, Billy is lost - with his family, he can overcome anything. 

Overall, I loved this movie. Time to deploy the dreaded 'But...'

While the disconnect between Levi and Asher Angel's performances did not bother me, it would have been to the film's benefit if there is a unity between their performances - there is little of Billy's wounded stoicism in Shazam's child-like glee.

The one thing that I did not like was the presentation of the family's super-alter egos, particularly the transformation of Billy's foster brother and confidant Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer) into whatever the Shazam version of Captain Marvel Jr is (Adam Brody).

Freddy has a physical impairment and is bullied by other kids at school. It is a part of the conflict between Freddy and Billy. His character is the one who I felt was the most short-changed by the transformation. When Brody's version of Freddy appears, he is sans impairment. 

Freddy does refer to himself in ableist terms - he is frustrated by his impairment, and frames Billy's lack of responsibility as Shazam in terms that emphasise how much Freddy desires to be not just a superhero, but non-disabled. And in the end, he ends up living out that fantasy.

While it's always great to see Adam Brody in things, but the fact that Freddy's ideal self does not have a disability is disheartening. I have an impairment similar to Freddy's - I have certainly had frustrations and times of self-loathing in my life. But so does everybody, regardless of ability.

My frustration with Freddy in Shazam is that the character falls into the same trope of a disabled person who desires to be free of their impairment. 

This is not an issue specific to Shazam, however it is depressing that a movie like this - that places such an emphasis on the diversity of its cast - should uphold the trope of the muscular physique as a signifier of superheroism without any comment. It is just a given that superheroes look like this. Sadly, Shazam's emphasis on a family of people of different backgrounds has to boil them down to the same familiar archetypes (on a related front, critic William Bibbiani has a great Twitter thread on the fat phobia of Hector's transformation into the herculean DJ Cotrona). 

I do not enjoy writing about this, but I really liked this movie - which makes this element sting worse. It is hard to dissect something you like so much, but it is important to bring it up. It is rare that I am faced with a movie that strikes so close to home - that rarity is itself an indictment on portrayals of disability in cinema, but that is a rant for another day.

The transition to the final endorsement is going to be awkward as hell.  

I really enjoy Shazam - it is a lot of fun (I had so much fun I even stuck around for the mid-credit scene, and the reveal of another Shazam foe). And while it is aimed at a slightly younger audience than previous DCEU movies, it boasts solid characterisation and a great theme. Whereas Man of Steel and BvS were self-absorbed in gloom with no sense of hope or purpose, Shazam is mature, funny and empathetic.

I just wish that sense of empathy did not come with qualifications.

 

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond called The James Bond Cocktail Hour. Every episode, we do a review of one of the books and one of the movies, picked at random. 

In the latest episode we review the 1963 film From Russia With Love, starring Sean Connery. Subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts!