“Shazam!” (2019)
Before going into the review of the movie, there are two things that I need to get out of the way; first I saw this in IMAX 3D, I love IMAX but stop pushing 3D, especially with movies where there is not one reason to have 3D.
Second I must say that after the marketing material, reviews and word of mouth, I was expecting so much more.
“Shazam!” had many good individual things that got mixed with lazy writing, mixed tones, too many plots and plot holes a long runtime with no reason for it.
All that stopped this from being all it could be; with no spoilers, I can’t really go deep into it but DM us, and we can talk.
Let’s start with the good Zachary Levi, no one else could play this part unless you could get in a time machine and get Tom Hanks; when he did “Big”, Zachary completely captured the essence of this character and balanced it all perfectly but honestly, he his not the only one, all the cast is the best part of the movie.
The Bad starts with the storytelling, we have a solid storylines setup that could help us connect emotionally with the villain and even the hero; we never do; they are like footnotes that are not really important; Mark Strong is a fantastic actor, we never see that here because we never believe his motivations, does he want revenge from Shazam from causing the accident? does he want to show his dad it was not his fault? or maybe that he is not weak? or perhaps he wants power? We don’t understand and honestly don’t care; the same goes for Asher Angel, who has the talent to go deeper into the emotional side that would strengthen the new family aspect.
Then we have the tone; it goes dark, comedy, family movie, and horror but never feels like it gels from one style to the other.
But probably the biggest problem is that it throws everything at us in one movie, this movie had enough storyline for 2 or 3 movies, and we get it all in one, just making us feel it’s just too much and that the 132 minutes were not well used.
Have you seen it? What did you think about it?
Tell us in the comments.
