This is much better than I thought it would be. I remember seeing the trailer and thinking that it looked horrendous. While like most superhero films the plot is fairly generic - supervillain needs to kill the good guy to obtain his power - there are some slight differences thanks to the superhero being a teenager and the life we're thrown into. The family of foster kids, that Billy/Shazam gets sent to, offers some laughs and cuteness. Mark Strong, (yes, that's not his real name), born Marco Giuseppe Salussolia, also works well as the villain, Dr. Thaddeus Sivana, and is a highlight. For what is tagged as a family film, it has some fairly strong elements of horror and violence at times, particularly that boardroom scene!
One of the main problems I had with this was that Billy/Shazam do not seem like the same person. The actor who plays Billy, Asher Angel, is already 17 years of age, so there is the looks thing, he isn't going to change that much, but more so it's how he acts. They needed to do more groundwork to get them to be closer to each other's behaviour. It almost always just seems like two different personalities. There is also a story bubbling under the surface for most of the film about Billy trying to find his mother. It has holes and the fact that she didn't want him isn't a surprise, because what else could it have been? As I have mentioned in other reviews of superhero movies, there is also the issue of the hero/villain being seemingly invincible. While the hero almost never dies in any form of this genre, as a viewer I need to know their weaknesses, that there is that possibility. I didn't get that. Even with the villain, it's not until the end that you learn about the eye. 3-2.5.
