The premise of Shazam! is quite simple. A boy, by the name of Billy, a foster kid who's been kicked out of several homes and is put into a new home, is given superpowers by a wizard, where all he has to say is one word (shazam), and he’ll turn into an adult superhero version of himself. The story is all of course, about him trying to figure out both his powers as well as how to be a superhero, while someone else with similar powers with a very similar background is out there and wants the same powers he has.

If I had to pick a favorite thing about Shazam!, it would definitely be the themes. I was never a foster kid, but my family did foster for quite a few years, so I know what it’s like for someone to be in the foster system. The themes about finding family, blood-related or not, really resonated with me, and made it easy for me to sympathize with all of the main group of kids in this movie, especially the two main leads, Billy and Freddy. I think this film handled those relatively heavy topics pretty well, too, with some pretty poignant stuff with Billy’s character arc, as he learns to embrace his true family, which is not, in fact, his real blood.

Speaking of Billy and Freddy, their dynamic kind of carries the movie. Billy is someone with trust issues, and thus, doesn’t really care for his new home (including Freddy), and Freddy has all the confidence in the world despite being disabled. They have a hard time getting along, really only due to Billy, until Billy gets his superpowers. The time when Billy gets his superpowers and both he and Freddy start experimenting with them is by far the most fun and entertaining section of the film. It really feels like how it would if a real teenager got superpowers and was just starting to figure them out, as well as learning to handle that responsibility. However, Billy’s powers do eventually add some complexity to his relationship with Freddy, adding in some decent drama later in the film.

Shazam! has some really good action, not a lot, but a little bit, as well as a lot of great comedy, too. I know Shazam’s typical name is Captain Marvel in the comics, but it seems that he’s since been rebranded due to there being a Marvel character of the same name, so I’ll just refer to him as Shazam. Shazam has a really fun and unique set of powers, differentiating himself from someone like Superman. His fights with the main villain, Dr. Sivana, are also really fun and quite funny as well, especially the earlier ones where he’s still learning his powerset. This movie also managed to make me chuckle a few times, which is definitely a rare feat.

When it comes to the mixed, this movie is definitely a bit generic. Not horribly generic, but generic enough that it does have a lot of cliché stuff, mainly with even the positive things that I talked about, like Billy and Freddy’s relationship, as well as Billy’s main foster storyline and finding family. I put it in the mixed section instead of the negative, though, because they do hit pretty hard despite being cliché, as well as predictable. The whole movie is pretty predictable, also.

My first negative would have to be the villain. He’s just…lame. He has a decent backstory that ties in with Billy’s, as I said, but the character himself is pretty shallow and almost feels distant from the audience, which is weird, because his backstory does provide a decent amount of emotional depth that should make it otherwise. I think the reason for this is that he’s not in the movie very much until the very end, and even when he’s onscreen, his presence isn’t really felt that much, as he’s really just doing bad things and not a lot is going on inside the character himself to move the needle or make him either compelling or interesting.

The pacing can be pretty rough as well. It’s really good for the most part in the first and third acts, but it drags mostly in the middle. The middle portion of the movie is by far the most generic and predictable part of the movie, and this is the part of the film where I would say the generic and predictable stuff is the hardest to get through, just because it's much more cliché than any of the other generic and predictable stuff. After Billy figures out his powers, the movie also kind of stalls for a bit until the villain really starts to do things, and it doesn’t have much momentum.

The final negative I’ll mention is the third act, which is pretty rough in my opinion. I know that everything with Billy’s foster family is in the comics and everything, but the way the movie handles it came off to me as rather cheesy and abrupt. I also found the third act as a whole to be pretty underwhelming and anticlimactic, the final climactic showdown with the main villain in particular.

I wouldn’t call Shazam! a bad movie at the end of the day, but its genericness doesn’t really make it stand out amongst a crowd of a ton of superhero movies, let alone the DCEU.