Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)

Directed by David F. Sandberg. Starring Zachary Levi, Jack Dylan Grazer, Lucy Liu, Rachel Zegler, Helen Mirren, Djimon Hounsou, Grave Caroline Currey, Ross Butler, Faithe Herman, D. J. Cotrona, Meagan Good, Marta Milans, Cooper Andrews, Adam Brody, Jovan Armand, Ian Chen, Asher Angel, Diedrich Bader. [PG-13]

A few years after the murky events of Shazam!, Billy Batson and his super-powered foster siblings are the “Philly Fiascos” (not their preferred name), a group of well-meaning but bumbling superheroes who can’t be taken seriously because they don’t take themselves seriously. Enter a trio of daughters of the Titan Atlas, played by Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu, and Rachel Zegler, who’ll stop at nothing to retrieve the broken staff of Shazam, even if that means laying waste to this world. Mind-numbing special effects extravaganza is so silly, it’s weightless, making its handful of abruptly dark moments (e.g., the forced suicide of a schoolteacher) seem like sick jokes to break up the monotony. The first Shazam! had some amusing moments here and there, but the character behavior here is so fatuous and jokey, it undercuts any attempt to build tension, dramatic interest, or excitement (Levi’s superhero actually seems dumber than before), and each new wisecrack sets the teeth on edge. The filmmakers are astonishingly lazy in the way they repurpose the same familiar (and clunky) gags, story beats, music cues, set piece rhythms, etc.—like a cover band doing the flashy contemporary cover version of an old song you didn’t like to begin with—and the crass product placement is extremely distracting (“Taste the rainbow!”). Mirren has been in three or four Fast and the Furious movies by now, but the embarrassment on her face when delivering some of these lines of dialogue proves even she has limits; meanwhile, Zegler is just a wide-eyed innocent who looks equally uncomfortable trying to play “regular girl” or “ageless super-being”, and Liu’s face looks too frozen for emotion, making her strangled delivery of vengeful declarations sound like the check already cleared and she just wants to get done by 5. Gal Gadot makes a token cameo appearance as you-know-who (Billy certainly does, the obsessive weirdo…).

30/100