Shazam! Fury of the Gods Review

The first film survived on scale. A kid in an adult body, a crowded house in Philadelphia, jokes about buying beer. This sequel spends its extra money widening everything that did not need widening, giving all six siblings powers and screen time so that nobody, including Billy Batson, gets an arc. Zachary Levi's routine, endearing at fourteen year old volume for one movie, curdles here because the script keeps writing him as broadly stupid rather than young.

Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu are visibly professionals doing a job, delivering mythological exposition in front of green screens, and Rachel Zegler is handed a romance the film has no time to build. The action is a stadium full of computer generated monsters and a dragon made of wood, staged with no sense of geography. There are still good things. Jack Dylan Grazer remains genuinely funny, Djimon Hounsou gets a warmer role, and the pen and the unicorns gag lands. But the whole thing arrived tired, and audiences agreed at once.