A superhero with vim (but give it a trim)
Shazam! (12A) Verdict: Way too long, but fun
SO FAR, the six superhero movies in the so-called DC Extended Universe have, on the whole, struggled to match the wit and fluency of their Marvel counterparts.
Shazam!, the seventh in the franchise, gets closer.
It never takes itself too seriously, rather a DC trait until now, and bowls along so cheerfully that it would be fun to go along for the ride — if only the ride were a sensible length. It is 132 minutes long, which is utterly crazy for a film aimed mainly at children.
The story borrows heavily, and with a kind of swaggering self-consciousness, from the late Penny Marshall’s delightful 1988 comedy Big. In that film, you’ll recall, a boy on the cusp of adolescence has his wish — to be ‘big’ — granted by a mechanical fortune-teller at an amusement park.
Here, a boy of roughly the same age, foster child Billy Batson (Asher Angel), is given the same power by an ancient wizard called Shazam and is transformed into a grown-up superhero (Zachary Levi), who faces a supervillain foe played by Mark Strong.
Director David F. Sandberg and screenwriter Henry Gayden acknowledge their debt in several ways that fans of Big will recognise. It’s cutely done.
Sadly, all this takes far too long to get going — the film could lose 15 minutes at both ends — but it’s fun when it does, and Levi milks every drop of goofy comedy out of the superhero guise.