**This review contains spoilers for the movie Shazam!, read at your own risk**
Shazam is a new superhero movie about a boy named Billy who was got separated from his mother at a fair when he was a kid and has been looking for her ever since. Bouncing from foster home to foster home trying to find his mom and get back to her. When one day he was sent to a foster home that had lots of other foster kids. Like all the last homes Billy went to he didn't want to stay and was still trying to get back to his mother. All the other foster homes let Billy go when he didn't want to stay. But this one was different. This family wasn't going to give up on Billy so fast and tried to make this a permanent home for him, a permanent family for him to have. Along with the parents in the home, there were 6 other foster kids. Mary, Pedro, Freddy, Eugene, and Darla. Shazam is a hero who is also a wizard kind of person, along with Shazam there are 6 other wizards in the court who are all trying to keep the "Seven Deadly Sins” locked away so they don’t wreak havoc onto the world. Shazam was the last one left alive of the court searching for someone pure of heart to take his place and keep the sins locked away.
Before he found Billy, he found another little boy named Thaddeus Sivana. Shazam thought that Thaddeus was pure of heart and would take his place but instead he fell for the influences of the deadly sins and was rejected in a sort of way. Because of that he was looked as crazy for what he was saying and wanted revenge against Shazam for being rejected for the cause. So Thaddeus came back when he was an adult, he became a scientist and cracked the way to get back to another dimension world where Shazam and the statues of the Seven Deadly Sins, which was a type of prison for them, to release the sins and gain the power they would give him. Shazam was dying of old age and needed someone to take his place fast to lock away the sins again and save the world. Shazam found Billy, and so he became the new Shazam to defeat Dr. Sivana and the 7 Deadly Sins. But he was just a kid and didn't know anything about what was going on or how to handle it all. With the help of his brother Freddy, who was an expert in all things superheroes, he learned about his powers and went after Dr. Sivana with help from the rest of his family.
I enjoyed this movie a lot, I thought it was really funny, the concept of Shazam being a kid on the inside that says “Shazam!” to become older and stronger with all these powers but is still the same person, the same kid, on the inside was fascinating to me. I really liked how the movie had some important topics in it that not a lot of movies like this, the superhero genre of movies, have in them. The topics of foster families being real families for some kids, going from home to home trying to find your birth parents or figure out where you belong in the world, teenage mothers trying to take care of their child against all the odds of what their told when they just want what’s best for their kid. I like how the movie had a mythology like villain being “The Seven Deadly Sins from hell”, Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath, and Sloth.
Zachary Levi did a great job in the movie, especially how he represented the childlike mindset of an adult. It was funny to watch him have all of the characteristics of a teenager in the mind but still look like an adult. I also like how they chose to make all of the other sibling's superheroes as well with the rest of the court that was keeping the deadly sins locked away. Another thing that I enjoyed about the movie was all the videos that Billy and Freddy made about the different powers and abilities that Shazam possessed and then they posted them on YouTube for the world to see. I felt as though it made it very modern and with the times I guess. Because as I’m sure you all know, almost everything gets posted online in order for it to go viral and make the person popular. And one last thing that I absolutely loved about the movie was how they had Superman come in at the very end to eat lunch with Freddy and Billy as Shazam. That was very funny and unexpected, for me at least it was unexpected.
There wasn’t anything in the movie that I wish they had done differently nor did I dislike anything in the movie. I thought it was very well done and very entertaining to watch. I would definitely recommend watching this movie, especially if you are a fan of superheroes and enjoy comedy movies, this is for sure the movie for you.
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