Fortunately this manages - at least some of the time - to hang onto the charm of the first film, even as it steers into a more mythological sphere (which the comic book version has been drifting towards for a while - you need an unique selling point in a superhero universe featuring Superman, and magic is Supes one big non-kryptonite weakness). At times there's a little too much going on and not all the jokes land, but it's still carving out a slightly different space in a very crowded superhero market.
Philadelphia's nameless superhero (Zachary Levi) - mortal form Billy Batson (Asher Angel) - and his super-powered family, collectively dubbed by the media as the "Philadelphia Fiascos" due to their fairly unimpressive efforts, are growing up and growing apart. Despite a commitment to working together, it's hard to resist the lure of teen parties, solo superheroism, exploring their lair in the Rock of Infinity, and watching baseball because you're not-so-secretly gay.
Fortunately a pair of angry gods, AKA The Daughters of Atlas, (Helen Mirren, Lucy Lui) turn up at a museum to snatch the shattered halves of the magic staff from the last movie, trashing the place and driving everyone mad before turning them into statues. Weirdly, next to none of these evil powers are used again; possibly somebody realised they were making a movie aimed at least halfway at kids.
Turns out the staff was the only thing preventing the Gods from returning to Earth to take over, so maybe tossing it aside at the end of the last film wasn't such a good idea. At least now the Marvel Family -
- oh wait, they can't actually be called that because of the complicated legal reasons behind the joke that our hero doesn't have a superhero name (technically his name is Captain Marvel, but because of copyright hijinx fifty years ago Marvel now own "Captain Marvel" as a trademark so he can't be called that anywhere but within stories - his comics and movies have to be titled something different, hence Shazam!)
-have something to unite them. But with Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer) - super form "Captain Everypower" (Adam Brody) - off flirting with new girl Anne (Rachel Zegler), will they be able to get their act together before the Daughters of Atlas trap Philadelphia under a magic dome as they search for a magical apple that will restore their kingdom and / or mess Earth up really badly? Well, no.
There's a lot going on here and not all of it works simply because there's not enough time in a two hour movie to give nine different main characters all the screen time they need. On the other hand, the big cast does force the film to keep things moving, which goes a long way towards disguising a lot of the plot holes - after all, the story is little more than a bunch of characters fighting over a couple of objects, and whoever gets them all wins (where "wins" means "unlocks the big final action set-piece").
(it's also interesting to consider how much of the story here is based on answering specific plot questions. "This is set in the DC universe - why don't other heroes come in to help?" "If our leads have superpowered alter-egos, why don't they stay superpowered for the entire film?" and so on)
Levi still plays his character as a bit of a dork and he's always entertaining, but his moral form gets a lot less screen time so there's not a lot of contrast there. Freddy gets more human time - probably because a motormouth wiseass works better as a character - and everyone else is given a few chances to do their specific thing. There's also slightly more going on with the bad guys than usual, which spices things up a little.
Otherwise the fights are good, the light-hearted tone remains generally on-point, and moving even slightly towards the world of magic and fantasy is enough to make this feel like more than just another superhero retread. If the first film was a fun surprise, this is a little less surprising - even if it does keep one or two tricks up its sleeve.
- Anthony Morris
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