Two stars. Rated PG-13, and quite generously, for scary fantasy violence, intense action and relentless mental cruelty
By Derrick Bang
There’s an old parable about three blind men encountering an elephant for the first time.
“It’s a snake,” says the first, having felt the trunk.
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| With the eager help of Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer, left), who imaginatively suggests a series of potential powers, the newly christened Shazam (Zachary Levi) discovers that — among other things — he can shoot powerful lightning bolts from his fingers. |
“No, it’s a spear,” opines the second, awed by the long, sharp tusk.
“It’s definitely a tree,” insists the third, unable to wrap his arms around one of the huge legs.
Scripters Henry Gayden and Darren Lemke — and, I’m certain, a sizable number of uncredited “sweeteners” — are the blind men, and this film is their elephant.
Shazam! feels like it was “written” by half a dozen people — one of whom is a sadist — working independent of each other. Apparently the resulting pages then were jammed together randomly, with no attempt to integrate tone, characterization or (God forbid) plot continuity.
And, hey presto! That’s how you get a movie as inept, haphazard and insufferably stupid as this one.
Newbie horror director David F. Sandberg (Lights Out, Annabelle: Creation) brings nothing to the party, and how could he? He has no meaningful template, from which to construct anything remotely artistic.
This Frankenstein’s monster of a flick is best described as Big (the 1988 Tom Hanks comedy) meets television’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, with the intelligence of the latter. Adults are advised to steer well clear, and I’m pretty sure even children will curl their lips with disgust.
When superhero movies go bad, they go very bad.
You’d think Warner Bros. would have learned, after 2011’s equally atrocious handling of Green Lantern, that the “Oh, wow; aren’t these powers cool?!” approach to these stories doesn’t work. At all.
Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with humor; indeed, a certain degree of smirky self-awareness is essential. But too much disrespects the nobility of these modern mythic characters, who (for the most part) deserve a measure of reverence. They’re not cartoons.
Gayden and Lemke treat this character — who dates back to 1939 (!) — as if he were a 5-minute Saturday Night Live sketch. Trouble is, this film runs a butt-numbing 132 minutes.
