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With Aquaman turning out to be a resounding success last year, DC Comics and Warner Bros deliver another enjoyable superhero film this week in Shazam!. The superhero film, based on the comics by the same name, is about a young orphan Billy Batson who gets magical powers one day. Whenever he screams Shazam!, Billy turns into an adult-sized superhero who has different superpowers, but retains Billy's mind. Shazam Movie Review: Zachary Levi’s DC Superhero Film Will Make the Child in You Jump in Glee!
Shazam! is directed by David F Sandberg. Zahary Levi and Asher Angel play Shazam and Billy Batson respectively. Mark Strong plays the main antagonist, Dr Thadeus Sivana, while Jack Dylan Grazer plays Freddie, Billy's best friend. The movie also stars Djimon Hounsou as the original Shazam.
Shazam! has opened to some really good reviews who have praised the humour, as well as Levi and Grazer's performances. The film is filled with some good moments, ten of which that impressed us the most are listed below:
Harry Pottersque Backstory of the Villain
Shazam! interestingly starts off in 1974 by showing as Sivana as a bespectacled child who is taunted by his brother, while the father is driving the car. Suddenly the car is transported somewhere, and the father and the brother disappears. The kid Sivana reaches the Council where the original Shazam asks him to choose the staff and control the Seven sins. Sivanna, however, is distracted by the sins and aims for a magical stone, tempted by the voices, which leads Shazam to deem him as unfit and cast him out. Sivana returns magically to the car and his family where his ruing gets his father distracted enough to meet with an accident. While the father and the brother blame him for the mishap, Sivana gets the determination to take the powers somehow. And he does.
Billy Meets His New Family
The orphan Billy Batson, who is in search of his biological mother, is sent to a new foster family. It is actually a support home run by a couple, who are orphans themselves. The whole dynamics of the family members feel so refreshingly charming that we feel hard to believe when Freddie jokes about them doing Game of Thrones stuff.
The Training Montage
After Billy gets his powers from the original Shazam (who vanishes after), he ropes in the geeky, smart alec Freddie to help him figure out his powers. Freddie uses his knowledge of every superpower he knows, from flight to invisibility, and makes Shazam test it out. Not all succeed, though! The whole sequence has a barrelful of laughs and shows off the amazing camaraderie between Zachary Levi and Jack Dylan Grazer.
The Bulletproof Reveal
Since Billy looks like an adult after becoming Shazam, he and Freddie try buying beer from the supermarket and succeeds in doing so. At the same time, the store is getting robbed and Shazam tries to take the gun out of one of the robbers. In retaliation, the other robber shoot at him but the bullets fall off his chest, revealing that he has bulletproof powers. Freddie even encourages the robbers to shoot Shazam on his face, but the bullets merely tickle him!
Sivanna Kills His Father, Brother and Board Members
Sivana, despite Mark Strong's best efforts, is merely a passable villain. However, he has one terrific scene to show off how powerful he is when Sivana hijacks his crippled father's board meeting. First thing he does is showing off his super-strength by throwing off his brother out of the window to his death below. He then lets the Seven Sins, all in beast forms, to snack upon the board members, before letting Greed kill his father.
"I am Batman"
The movie has quite a lot of nods and laughs over other DC properties like Batman, Superman and even Aquaman. Batman's Batarang plays a crucial role in a chase scene. The best Batman joke happens when Shazam, while running away from Sivana, hides into a children's store in the mall. When Sivana seeks him out there, Shazam throws toys at him, one of them being a Batman doll that lets out the iconic gruff line, "I'm Batman!"
Billy Meets His Real Mother
Shazam!'s most emotional scene happens when Billy Batson finally tracks down his real mother, thanks to his foster siblings. However, he doesn't get the sweet emotional reunion that he was looking out for. Instead, his mother, now married to a grouch, tell him that she hadn't lost him at the fair years back. Billy was the result of teenage pregnancy and his mother was finding it difficult to take care of him alone. So when Billy gets lost in the crowd, his mother later finds him in the company of cops and then turns back, thinking he has a better life with the welfare support. Feels cold, but quite tragic too!
The Many Shazams!
The third act feels stretched but it has some awesome moments when Shazam and his siblings take on Sivana and his Sins in a fair. When Billy's siblings get captured by Sivana's monsters, he as Shazam goes upto the villain who now has the original Shazam's staff. However, Shazam remembers a piece of advice his predecessor had given him and tells his siblings to hold onto the staff and scream, 'Shazam!'. Voila, they all turn into adult-sized superheroes with one distinct superpower. Adam Brody, Michelle Borth, Ross Butler, DJ Cotrona and Meagan Good make cameos in this scene.
Too Much Noise
As Shazam (who can fly now) and Sivana take their fight to the city, they have a standoff in the air, where Sivana gives his cliched supervillain speech. Hilariously, though, Shazam, who doesn't possess Superman's super-hearing, can't hear the speech over the traffic noise below. So it looks like Sivana is just rambling to himself.
Is It a Bird? Is It a Plane? It's Superm...Oops!
After the villain is defeated and sent to prison, it is back to school for the kids. When Freddie goes to the cafeteria, he is shunned by his schoolmates for earlier breaking his promise of bringing Shazam to the cafeteria (which had led to Billy and Freddie having a big row). To his surprise, his siblings join him while Billy as Shazam enters the cafeteria mouthing praises about Freddie. And then he tells Freddie he has brought in a friend. To Freddie's, and our surprise, we see Superman walk in the frame from the left. Shazam! however, trolls us by only showing the torso of Supes' body, with only his jaw in the frame. And as he is about to sit, the movie cruelly cuts to credits! Boo!
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 05, 2019 03:42 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
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