Shazam is a fun adventure filled with laughs. The movies has solid performances by Zachary Levi as Shazam and Asher Angel as Billy Watson. The movie starts out with an aging old wizard Shazam looking for someone pure of heart to take over his powers to protect the world from the seven deadly sins. In the process, the old Shazam creates the new Shazam’s first arch enemy and villain in Dr. Sivana as played by Mark Strong. Who was rejected by the old Shazam wizard for not being pure at heart.
Dr. Sivana then spends the rest of his childhood and adulthood trying to find the old wizard and when he does, the seven deadly sins decide that he should be their champion giving him their powers. Shazam is a roller coaster with great effects and a lot of funny bits. On the other hand it is a movie that is about 15 to 20 minutes too long. It has a few scenes that just have no purpose in helping move the story along. Like for instance the scene in the boardroom with Dr. Sivana where he throws his brother out the window and let’s all the seven deadly demons eat and kill everyone including his father. It’s a scene that has the viewer asking why? And it also maybe a little to intense for younger viewers to watch.
Shazam is also filled with a lot of cool easter eggs including some people may not get, like the homage pay back to the movie “Big” when they play a little bit on the floor piano in the toy store. The greatest easter egg being the ending twist with Billy’s foster family of which I am not going to spoil here and you’ll have to go watch the movie to see for yourself.
The movies overall message about the importance of foster parents and foster families may make you shed a tear.
On the AllForSciFi scale, Shazam gets a solid 4 out of 5 stars. It’s a good movie and fun for the whole family. I encourage everyone to go see and kick off the summer of 2019 movie season right!