Review: Shazam! Fury Of The Gods

Shazam! Fury of The Gods
Cert: 12A / 130 mins / Dir. David F Sandberg / Trailer

So turbulent days aboard the S.S. DCEU mean that it's arguably not the best of times to be dropping the latest chapter in a continuity which may or may not be continuing and which has always regarded itself as, at best, advisory. But it's March and the rest of the calendar is full, so Shazam! Fury Of The Gods is here. The plot is as follows:

Something something, magic staff;
Something something, power.
Something something, superheroes vs gods;
Something something, Helen Mirren chewing the scenery like it's made by Wrigley's*¹.

True to form, DC and Warner Bros have turned out a product which is simultaneously trying too hard, and also has no idea what it's supposed to be doing. The vast majority of 2019's cast return for the sequel, and their performances are as assured as last time, if somewhat hampered by a weaker script. The undeniable strength here is that it's all firmly family-friendly, but any film doing that and bolting on a moral message runs the risk of being too patronising into the bargain. Shazam is no exception to this, and in a few places it feels like the message is being delivered by a touring theatre company to a school assembly.

The main problem though is that David F Sandberg is trying to re-capture the lightning-in-a-bottle which made the first entry so surprisingly great. The deadpan humour has the edge over the overtly scripted gags this time round, but the overall hit-rate is more patchy. Without the origins-story structuring the run-time, this quickly becomes a generic good/evil headbasher; fine if you haven't seen that before, but there are few people in 2023's audience who fit that description.

The film is as accomplished as you'd expect from a studio this size, but also with absolutely no restraint. The visuals veer wildly between High School Musical, Doctor Strange and Hogwarts, sacrificing its identity in the process. The third-act battle for Philadelphia feels like a white noise migraine where the effects teams have been told to do whatever they want because none of this matters any more.

Unfortunately, Fury Of The Gods doesn't have the energy or conviction of its predecessor, too mired in its own mythology to do anything interesting with the storyline. But for a kids' film it's fairly decent, and if that sounds like damning with faint praise, it absolutely is...

*¹ She's a bonafide national treasure of course but god bless Helen Mirren, who appears to have confused leading the vanguard for mature actresses securing prominent roles in Hollywood, with blithely casting aside all dignity for a quick and easy paycheck. You know for a fact that she's watched Blanchett and Hopkins in Thor and thought 'I could do that'. Well yes Helen, you probably could. But not with a DC script, as you have now discovered. It's less Shakespeare, more Mother Goose. Still, spend the money wisely, yeah? ^{[ BACK ]}

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