![]() ![]() Thanks to Levi, Billy’s physical transformation from a crazy, mixed-up 14-year-old into a thirtysomething super-superhero has a kid-in-a-candy-store quality. ![]() It hinges on a wizard (Djimon Hounsou) searching for a “champion” who is “strong of spirit and pure of heart.” In its own cheerful adolescent terms, it’s emotionally complete.Īs Shazam, Zachary Levi gives a wonderfully elastic, oversized performance. For once we have an origin story that plays more like a rounded fable. The script places them in a stylized, funky, mostly comedic context that keeps the emotions from getting sloppy and the mayhem from descending into destruction porn. Given the Philly setting and the movie’s theme, I kept waiting to hear Sister Sledge sing “We Are Family,” and watch this happy cast frug to it. ![]() The young performers-from Faithe Herman as little Darla Dudley, who yearns for Billy to treat her like a real sister, to Grace Fulton as college-bound Mary Bromfield, who only looks as if she’s all business-stay loose and limber. We care about whether he’ll stick with his latest and best foster home, hip guardians Rosa and Victor Vasquez (Marta Milans and Cooper Andrews), and genial foster siblings, notably superhero aficionado Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer), who spins tall tales about why he walks with a forearm crutch, and doesn’t let anything slow him down. Written by Henry Gayden, from a story by Gayden and Darren Lemke, this film melds the unpretentious, dreamy joys of old-time comic books with the sly, rambunctious humor of Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon featurettes like “Fractured Fairy Tales” and “Aesop and Son.” It takes its lost-boy protagonist Billy (Asher Angel), who’s been searching for his biological mother since age three, just seriously enough. As the drawling Gomer Pyle used to exclaim, “SHAAZAMM!” Sandberg’s nifty, exuberant Shazam! might have snuck in a third A for the joy-giving qualities of Aphrodite and a second M for the satirical humor of Momus. The magic word that turns 14-year-old Billy Batson into a superman, shazam, is an acronym summarizing his powers: the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury. ![]()
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