Shazam! Review

The premise does most of the work: give a boy in care the body of an adult superhero and he will not fight crime, he will buy beer, charge a dollar for selfies and test whether he can survive a bus crash on a phone camera. Zachary Levi's physical comedy sells it, and Asher Angel and Jack Dylan Grazer keep the emotional line honest underneath the gags. What is genuinely unusual is that the foster siblings are written as people rather than obstacles, and the film's real subject, a kid who keeps running because he is certain that a family is something he will lose, is handled without a lecture.

Sandberg's horror background pays off in the Seven Deadly Sins, which are nastier than a family film needs. The limits are visible everywhere else. The lighting is flat television grade, Mark Strong is stranded playing a villain whose whole character is resentment, the finale is a computer generated fight in a Christmas carnival, and at two hours and twelve minutes it is at least fifteen minutes too long.