WARNING: SPOILERS

I actually kind of liked this. At least I liked it more than most critics, whose reviews were tabulated by Rotten Tomatoes into a 49% rating. Normally it goes the other way. Normally I’m like, “Really? That high, huh?” But I thought this was breezy and fun.

I guess it helps that I came in with low expectations.

C.C. Beck’s source material is ridiculous: “Holy Moly” and “Big Red Cheese” and “Talky Tawny,” and dopey villains like Mister Mind, a super-intelligent worm that the movies keep teeing up in those mid-credit sequences but have wisely stayed away from (thus far). Basically the original Captain Marvel was created for kids for whom Superman was too complex. And yet these David F. Sandberg-directed movies make it work. Billy Batson (Asher Angel) is a kid who turns into a manly superhero (Zachary Levi) with a magic word (“Shazam!”). Every other incarnation portrayed the superhero as a man—a rather dull man—but here they wisely make him a kid inside a man’s body. It’s Superman crossed with “Big.” 

I also like the sense of place we got here. The Shazamily has six members, but I’d say the city of Philadelphia is a close seventh. When the kids screw up, they’re known as the Philly Phiascos. When the baddies create chaos by planting a golden apple in our realm, it’s planted at Citizens Bank Park, home of the NL champion Philadelphia Phillies. 

Kind of a bummer when I found out they never actually filmed in Philadelphia. Georgia. Tax breaks. So it goes.

The mightiest of mortal beings
Before the plot kicks in, we get the usual small emotional conflicts. Billy is worried about “aging out” of his foster home, and maybe as a result he’s over-managing the group. Mary (Grace Caroline Currey) wants to go off to college, while the entire group is not exactly getting kudos from the city. The Benjamin Franklin Bridge weakens and its supports snap, and the Shazamily shows up and rescues everybody, but can’t save the bridge. Rather than talk infrastructure, etc., the news media blames the superheroes. Everyone is J. Jonah Jameson now.

Meanwhile, Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer) is being bullied at school. Is that still a thing? Jocks mocking the other-abled? Then a new, impossibly pretty girl named Anthea shows up (Rachel Zegler, Maria from “West Side Story”), and Freddy, no fool, stands up for her. She’s grateful, and maybe interested, but, oops, she’s with the bad guys, the Daughters of Atlas, who don’t like what the Wizard has done with Daddyo’s powers. (Atlas is that first “A” in Shazam!) So why is she hanging at Freddy’s high school? Because of that mid-credits scene in the first film, when Shazam and Superman buoy up Freddy in the lunchroom. Since Freddy apparently knows Shazam, she’s going to use him to find Shazam. Instead, he shows up as his own alter ego, Captain Marvel Jr., and they steal his powers with a thunderstick-y thing. They’re taking all the powers back, not just Daddyo’s.

I call him Captain Marvel Jr. above but the movie doesn’t call him that. It’s a running gag with a meta, intellectual property wink. The team is called the Phiascos in part because they’re unnamed; and they’re unnamed in part because Marvel owns the copyright to “Captain Marvel,” even though their Captain Marvel came way, way later*; so in this movie, everyone keeps suggesting different names for our heroes. Freddy wants to call himself “Captain Everypower,” one guy suggests “High Voltage” and I think “Captain Thunder”—the original Captain Marvel’s original name—is even tossed out. Eventually the Wizard (Djimon Hounsou) tells him his real superhero name: “Shazam.” Sure.

* It’s a bit ironic that DC owns the copyright to the original Captain Marvel but not to the name, since they’re the ones that sued Fawcett Comics for Superman infringement—and won—allowing Marvel to eventually swoop in and grab the name. Live by IP, die by IP.

Oh, during the battle, one guy does use the original name, and I’m ashamed to say I missed who it was. Shazam has just been zapped, the citizenry cheer him on, and one guy shouts, “You’re the best, Captain Marvel!” His dopey red shirt with yellow collar/cuffs should’ve been the giveaway. It’s Michael Gray, who played Billy Batson in the live-action, Saturday-morning “Shazam!” TV series in the mid-1970s. I watched it all the time. Highways and byways of the land, baby! It’s a nice cameo. The original 1940s Billy Batson, Frank Coghlan Jr., guested on Michael's show in 1974, so this is a nice pass-the-torch moment. We'll see if they do it again in 2072.

The other Daughters of Atlas are Hespera (Helen Mirren) and Kalypso (Lucy Liu), and they’re hardly of one mind. Lucy Liu wants serious vengies, Maria from “West Side Story” keeps empathizing with the humans (and Freddy), while the Grand Dame is stuck in the middle. When she gets too stuck, Lucy Liu simply eliminates her, then removes Anthea’s powers. She also puts a dome over Philly—I forget why—and unleashes “Jason and the Argonauts”-type monsters on the citizenry.

By this point, everyone in the Shazamily has lost their powers except for Billy. So what do the others do?

To be honest, they haven’t had much to do in the first place. I’m sure it’s tough for the filmmakers: six characters with super alter egos, each played by a different actor (except for Mary), so how do you make sure everyone gets proper face time? It’s mostly the Zach and Jack show. Even Asher Angel as Billy, the nominal star of the first, gets short shrift here. Pedro (Jovan Armand) comes out as gay, which … is that still a thing? Having to come out? It feels like we're this close from it not being anything. I forget what Eugene’s bit is, but Darla (Faithe Herman) likes animals. She has a kitty cat named Tawny—a shout-out to the Talking Tiger—and during the battle they are told that the one mythic beast that can take on the others is a unicorn. And she loves unicorns. (She's a little girl.) Except, wait, these aren’t good unicorns. They hate everybody. So what might tame them?

Get ready for the most blatant product-placement in movie history. Faced with a charging unicorn, cutie-pie Darla stands there with a confident smile, and at the last moment tosses into the air … Skittles! This stops the unicorn cold. It sniffs the air, then begins eating them off the ground while Darla whispers the product’s slogan: Taste the rainbow.

That’s pretty awful. I mean, whatever the Reese’s Pieces slogan was, E.T. never said it. At the same time, unicorns and rainbows cracked me up. It’s the 10-year-old girl dream combo.

Or 70 years past the life of the author
I know the movie doesn’t sound like much, and it isn’t, but it has moments. Example: At the Rock of Eternity, the kids get a sentient feather pen named Steve, and they use it to send a letter to the Daughters of Atlas. Hespera reads the letter aloud, straight-faced, vaguely confused and impeccably Helen Mirren:

Dear Daughters of Atlas. Violence is not the answer. Oh, great first sentence. Thanks, Darla. We’d like to make a trade. We’ll give up our powers if you give us Freddy. Add “unharmed” or they’re gonna monkey’s paw you. Smart, Eugene. Steve, add “unharmed.” Then, like, “Yours tru…” No. “Sincerely.” “Best.” Maybe just “Signed, The Champions.” Should we proofread it? Nah, Steve doesn’t make mistakes, just writes what you say. Great, I feel good about this. Me, too. Anyone else want a Gatorade? Do we have red?

In the end, Shazam sacrifices himself to defeat Lucy Liu. But at his gravesite, his crush and ours, Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), shows up, and, as a god herself, reactivates the thunderstick, restoring various powers and, yes, bringing Shazam back to life. It’s an OK scene, and always nice to see Gal, but I was hoping they’d just let him lie. Learn the Leo’s-face-disappearing-into-the-void lesson of “Titanic.” But he’s IP. IP lives forever. Or at least 100 years.

The second Billy cheering on the third, copyright laws be damned.