This movie was already shown in Indonesia last Saturday night via the midnight show, but my wife and I never considered seeing a movie that late, so we waited until our most convenient time. As we wanted to utilize our soon to be expired vouchers for 4DX studio in CGV, we opted to see this film yesterday which happened to be a public holiday. Well we should go on with the movie now.
Brief Story Line
Billy Batson (Asher Angel - Andi Mack TV series) was a 14 year old boy who had been in and out of foster home many times and finally arrived at a house for foster kids managed by Victor (Cooper Andrews - The Walking Dead TV series etc) and Rosa (Marta Milan). In the same house, there were already 5 other children staying there that consisted of the disabled but positive attitude boy Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer - IT etc), the slightly older girl Mary (Grace Fulton - Annabelle: Creation etc), the boy who loved video games Eugene (Ian Chen - Fresh off the Boat TV series etc), the shy Pedro (Jovan Armand) and the youngest who loved to hug, Darla (Faithe Herman - This is Us TV series).
One day Billy was somehow transported to a magical place where he met with an old wizard (Djimon Hounsou - King Arthur: Legend of the Sword etc) and was given a gift which would transform him into an adult guy wearing weird costume by saying the name Shazam (Zachary Levi - Office Uprising etc). Young Billy finally found out that as the adult Shazam, he would have multiple super powers. And with the help from Freddy, he would slowly learn how to use them.
Meanwhile Dr. Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong - Kingsman: The Golden Circle etc) who had been trying to look for magical power source finally found them, albeit evil powers. As he wanted to also collect the power of Shazam, he tried all he could to capture him. So what would happen to Billy who was way in over his head? Find them all in this fun superhero movie.
End of Brief Story Line
OK this was one completely different DC comics superhero movie. It was a lot of fun and enjoyable due to the wonderful performances of Asher Angel as young Billy and Zachary Levi as the adult Shazam. Could you imagine a young boy who suddenly have super powers in an adult body with adult looks? Definitely a lot of things he could not have thought could be done were tried and the result was a lot of hilarious moments. However, what I liked about the movie was it did not entirely providing us only the fun part, but also the bad part that resulted from the irresponsibility behavior of a young boy given so much power.
In term of story, I felt it was OK. The early part was a bit unclear of what the story about and I was actually a bit worried the movie might not be good as the pace was a bit slow, especially the part about the villain Dr. Sivana. However, my wife and I agreed that Mark Strong was totally awesome playing this part since he provided a total contrast character to our superhero Shazam. And once Billy started to get the magical power, then it became a lot more fun and interesting. The additional young cast, especially Billy's foster siblings were also great. Credit to be given to Jack Dylan Grazer as Freddie and the youngest Darla played nicely by Faithe Herman.
This movie was not filled with abundant CGI effects but whatever special effects they had in here were pretty awesome to my opinion. One thing that looked a bit funny to me was the body of Shazam which looked too buffy and seemed unreal, which should not be the case as I understood Zachary Levi really worked out intensely to ensure he had the body of superhero. Btw, since we saw this in a 4DX studio, we really enjoyed the experience of the moving chairs with wind effects on our face during flying scenes, or other effects we felt in quite a number of scenes. The sound effects of 7.1 Dolby Surround system were amazing. During the end credit scenes (which had 1 mid & 1 post credit scenes), I noticed it was having Dolby Atmos effects, which was strange considering the studios that normally had this system, did not show them.
In Indonesia, the movie was categorized for 13+ which I thought was spot on, since even though the story was about some boy magically got super powers, there were some violent scenes which might scare the younger children. There were quite many songs that we could enjoy here and I was particularly fond of songs from Queen and one funny moment with the theme from Rocky movies. There was also one nice surprise during the finale fight scene which I thought was fantastic, even though people who read the comic books would have known about it.
I mentioned above that this movie already played earlier through midnight show. Honestly I am not sure the reason for such strategy as I believed a major premier on the usual Wednesday would have made the movie gotten the big spotlight it deserved. In fact it was also surprising that during the many times I saw movies in theaters in the past month, I never once saw the trailer to this movie. This probably would have explained the lukewarm enthusiasm of movie audience to see the film as it did not seem to garner a lot of attention, unlike other previous superhero movies. I just hope the strategy did not hurt the success of this movie in Indonesia.
Overall I had a fun time seeing this movie. There were quite numerous hilarious moments involving the adult Billy in the form of Shazam, and the villain was really dark & bad (not grey). There might not be as many fight scenes that audience would have wanted but for me it was adequate. This was a quite complete superhero origin movie, and with a duration of 132 minutes, it had sufficient time to provide the whole story for us (but may be too long for some). Objectively though, the earlier part might have been better if it was made in a faster pace and the ending was probably too light for those looking for a grand finale major fights (it had a family friendly sense). So if you are looking for a different kind of DC comics superhero movie, then this one would be a great option.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Fun Fact:
Shazam originally was named Captain Marvel when it was first created in 1939. However, due to the Trademark of "Captain Marvel" was owned by Marvel Comics, DC decided to rename the character to Shazam.
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