Tripwire Reviews Shazam! Fury Of The Gods

Big Red And Cheesy

Tripwire’s senior editor Andrew Colman casts his eye over Shazam!: Fury Of The Gods, out in cinemas from tomorrow. Warning: a few spoilers ahead…

Director: David F Sandberg
Stars: Zachary Levi, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer, Adam Brody, Ross Butler, Meagan Good, D.J. Cotrona, Grace Caroline Currey, Faithe Herman, Ian Chen, Jovan Armand, Marta Milans, Cooper Andrews, Djimon Hounsou, Rachel Zegler with Lucy Liu and Helen Mirren

So does the world need another Shazam movie? The answer is of course not, considering that the perfectly serviceable first outing of Billy Batson and his cumbersome alter ego basically left no stone unturned regarding our juvenile protagonist’s journey and setting. But Hollywood, even during a period when cinemagoers are experiencing fatigue with spandex operas, has form when it comes to ploughing ahead regardless of trends when it comes to superfluous sequels. With most superhero flicks, there’s the rule of three when it comes to follow-ups, with the third instalment of a franchise enacting the law of diminishing returns. But with this second feature everything has already reverted to slavish formula, the filmmakers ignoring what made the first film so passable.

So Billy Batson (Asher Angel) is back, along with his loveable 1950s gurning goof Shazam (Zachary Levi), whose man-child oafishness accounts for 90% of the film’s laughs. His superhero chums (a bunch of actors barely out of their teens) are on hand for the backstory, which is that they’re all a bit tired of Shazam’s neediness. There’s the small matter regarding what name each super-character should have and how the people of Philly refer to them as “the Fiascos” even when they save their ungrateful backsides. And then there’s the bit where I have to explain the more significant matter, the threat to earth from The Daughters of Atlas (two heavyweight actresses and one young one), who feel that they are the deserved controllers of the holy staff or wand or whatever, and want to destroy the planet cause of the effrontery of the adolescents who broke it in the first film. Something like that. Lead baddies Lucy Liu (slumming it) Helen Mirren (really slumming it) are game and condescending enough (that’s about the extent of their characterisation) and there’s fun aplenty when the big galoot and his lieutenants get swatted about by the immensely more powerful trio in a haze of sturm and drang CGI’d lightning bolts and stuff. For about five minutes. Then it gets very repetitive indeed.

Honestly, do we really need to alert readers that there are spoilers in this review? Not only is everything so by the book that even the lightweight comedy that is the film’s saving grace gets sucked out of the proceedings. There’s the aforementioned super heroic conflagrations, plus the mandatory energy dome, shiny things and of course most of downtown Philadelphia being immersed in a plague of biblical proportions, including hellish, snarling stone-creatures and zombies. Always with the bloody zombies. Does every superhero flick have to have an apocalyptic ending? And who, despite the mandatory everything’s all rosy and huggy now cutesy last scene, will rebuild the City of Brotherly Love after what happened? After all that destruction that’d take years, wouldn’t it? And wasn’t it Shazam’s fault that all that mess happened in the first place? What a silly turd that boy is.

Apart from the usual quibbles, there are far too many plotholes and terrible lines in this movie that are inadvertently amusing – I found myself laughing at rather than with the movie. The subplot regarding one of the daughters of Atlas (Anthea) falling in love with Freddy (the blue spandexed one) as she needed to visit a high school before taking over the world is especially brainless, but then the three goddesses needed to fall out with each other at the end so Shazam and his buddies could win. The rest of the final reel is a litany of drab reactive acting whenever the young cast are confronted with a green screen of (apparent) relentless destruction. Apart from Grace Fulton (who didn’t have that much to do beyond being a bit smug) the remaining members of the ensemble are two dimensional and barely needed to act at all. Still, they’re preferable to the supporting cast of the last three Spider-Man flicks. Feh!

Like nearly all super-hero movies, the unwieldy combination of camp melodrama and offhand comedy just doesn’t gel – one minute the kids’ foster parents casually shrug their shoulders when they learn that their house has been destroyed, the next there’s the aftermath scene when the whole cast sob uncontrollably. And that is essentially what’s wrong with this film – it doesn’t dare lurch into parody, or knowing irony. It has to play safe, which ironically leads to it coming across as parody.

Despite all that there’s been worse dreck than this, and Levi’s larger than life big red cheese does at least vaguely remind old gits like me of the retro source material. But, and this does bear repeating, there’s no point in taking any of this seriously you know. I do wish the filmmakers would remember that and focus entirely on laughs, even if the comedy is reminiscent of the Brady Bunch or possibly Welcome Back Kotter. In the end there’s the occasional moment of hilarity but it’d be remiss of me not to state that this movie is generally bloody awful. But it could’ve been good bloody awful rather than the usual bloody awful.

Shazam! Fury of The Gods is in cinemas from Friday 17 March. Here’s the film’s trailer