For all its humour, explosions, and dastardly villains, SHAZAM! is a superhero movie about hope, love, and found family—and even better, it’s set during the Christmas festivities, even though Warner Bros. missed a trick by releasing it outside the holiday season.
Fourteen-year-old Billy Batson (Asher Angel) spends his days desperately searching for his birth mother. His quest has led him to run away from countless foster homes while developing a lengthy record of petty crimes. But as Billy arrives at the last-chance saloon, his life is about to change radically as an everyday subway journey turns into a magical rollercoaster ride of new and confusing superpowers.
SHAZAM! offers something fresh in an ocean of comic-book movies, placing its tale of courage, super strength, and flight in the hands of a lonely, angry, streetwise schoolboy who feels he doesn’t belong. Billy Batson is a teen who has been let down by the adults surrounding him his whole life, a kid who understands loneliness and rejection as he searches for love, hope and family.
Billy reflects the desires and wishes of so many kids as they dream of flight, long to fight the bullies who torment them, and gain superpowers to save those they love. The film may be titled SHAZAM! But the heart and soul of David. F. Sandburg’s delightful film adaptation of C.C. Beck and Bill Parker’s unique comic book hero is the young Billy Batson.
Sandberg joyously dovetails elements of Superman (the end sequence is a love letter to Superman II) with the fiery energy of Kick-Ass and the comedy of Big, and Vice Versa. The result is a lively origin story that appeals to all ages while still carrying a far darker edge. What could have been the movie’s biggest flaw becomes one of its most charming elements: the interplay between the overgrown Boy Scout superhero SHAZAM (Zachary Levi), his insecure teenage self (Asher Angel), his found family, and his new best friend, Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer).
For all its humour, explosions, and dastardly villains, SHAZAM! is a superhero movie about hope, love, and found family —and even better, it’s set during the Christmas festivities, even though Warner Bros. missed a trick by releasing it outside the holiday season.
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