Shazam! (2019)

Film: Shazam! (2019)
Stars: Zachary Levi, Asher Angel, Mark Strong, Jack Dylan Grazer, Adam Brody, Djimon Hounsou
Director: David F. Sandberg
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

While the Marvel Cinematic Universe will be completely shaken in the next two weeks, and indeed, even I have gotten on the band wagon, let's not pretend that Avengers is the only comic book game in town right now, as DC has brought out yet another entry in their series.  Coming off of the success of Aquaman and Wonder Woman, DC is continuing to revamp its image in hopes of maybe someday approaching the success of Marvel (I feel like that's going to be impossible, though we're talking billions compared to tens of billions, so everyone in the C-Suite is winning on this front).  Here we see one of the stranger reboots since Ant-Man, as instead of going with the grittier, serious dramas that DC is well-known for, we get a cheeky, fun film featuring Zachary Levi of all people as a superhero.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on Billy Batson (Angel), a young man in a foster home who has been kicked out of all of his previous foster homes for petty crimes and truancy.  He is placed with a group of five other kids, each with varying degrees of personality (the clingy kid, the overachieving girl, the boy obsessed with video games, etc), but seems intent on leaving this place as well, even though he has a potential friend in Freddy (Grazer), a sarcastic, disabled boy who hides his insecurities behind his biting humor.  One day, Billy is brought to an ancient world, where a wizard (Hounsou) thinks that he might be worthy to take over as his successor and stop Dr. Thaddeus Sivana (Strong), someone who was not worthy but has spent his life trying to gain access to the wizard again to steal his powers.  The wizard transfers his powers to Billy, making him turn into Shazam (Levi), a superman-like figure that still has the mentality of a young Billy.  Along with Freddy, Billy/Shazam sets out to both defeat Sivana and to learn who he is, and who he can be in a new family.

The film seems rife with cliche potential, as we've seen the superhero brought about by family tragedy so many times (Batman, Superman, Spider-Man...) that it's impossible to not fall heavily on cliche.  Shazam! admittedly does it by mixing it a touch of Big, but there's nothing in this plot that hasn't been done over-and-over, especially in the past twenty years, on the big screen.  What sets Shazam apart, though, are the little things.  For starters, its way goofier that pretty much any other superhero movie out right now, with genuinely weird, lower-budget thrills like the mocking of the wizard (Shazam is, after all, a ludicrous name for a superhero), and the occasional ribbing of the fellow DC heroes (though, Warner Brothers, if you ever want to approach MCU, you need to shell out the $500k paycheck for that Henry Cavill cameo at the end, as there's no way Marvel would have just used his chest to fill a punchline).  The entire sequence where the other five orphans transform into superheroes of their own, with actors like Adam Brody and Ross Butler giddily getting into the magic is terrific fun, and exactly the sort of way that something like Shazam! can set itself away from the pack.

Best of all is Zachary Levi in the lead.  I don't know that anyone would have guessed that Levi, of all people, would be headlining a superhero film (though of course he's had bit parts in the Thor franchise, making him I believe the only major actor other than Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje to appear in both the modern DC & Disney's Marvel universes).  This isn't because he's not talented and almost comically handsome (he is both of those things), but because his brand of "awe shucks" G-rated persona feels so strange against the darkness of the DC Universe.  And yet, it totally works.  Levi hasn't been this fun in a movie since, well, ever, bringing the ease and charm of Chuck and She Loves Me to his first significant film role.  Hopefully this opens up some doors for him, because other than maybe Chris Pratt, I don't know anyone else who can bring this same level of eager-but-loveable to the film screens, and as Shazam! proves, in the right hands this can totally work.