I enjoyed the first Shazam despite its weaknesses. When a film knows its strengths and sticks to them, it tends to be much more enjoyable. This is a weaker movie but it retains at least some of the good qualities from the first movie. It's got big, silly action, some cool designs for monsters, some funny parts, some heartfelt, sad parts, etc. The music is nothing special but not distractingly bad either.
The villains (a trio of women) are quite underwhelming. It all just lacks imagination. And Zegler's acting is noticeably weak. She overacts everything, like a boxer who telegraphs every hit, her reactions feel so predictable. Acting is the kind of thing you only tend to notice when it's either very good or very bad. Some of the actors (including Zachary Levi) are good, but Zegler is bad.
With very low expectations, this movie was alright. I didn't hate it and I got something out of it. But in that sense it met my low expectations, with no risk of exceeding them. It's disappointing that they couldn't take the ideas/material from Shazam! And actually build something more interesting.
The advantage of a sequel is that you can learn from your mistakes, remove the boring stuff, double down on the best stuff and take it in new directions. But too often the sequel only exists to repeat the formula of the original and make money, including this movie.
The special effects are good but the surrounding filmmaking elements do nothing with them. There is no imagination, no excitement. It's clear that the actors have nothing to play off of. It's clear that nobody feels there's anything special about this movie or its events. It's very by-the-numbers. I still generally enjoy the tone, characters and monsters, etc., but it's passionless.
It does feel a bit woke in terms of trying to have 3 female villains and other female heroes. It's just become so trite at this point. Always nerfing the male heroes and artificially replacing them with females who are just automatically strong, wise and basically perfect. It's dull is all. It could work, but not if every movie does it with the same lack of creativity or sincerity. And I don't think audiences like it. There's nothing wrong with the strong male hero rescuing the beautiful damsel in distress.
Full disclosure, I saw the first half of this on a plane. But it kept me entertained and distracted from the turbulence for long enough. And the fact that I remembered where I was up to and bothered to finish it is a point in its favour. It's better than most superhero movies coming out these days, but that's a frightfully low standard, unfortunately. Especially if you like funny, light-hearted, silly, chaotic action, with a bit of heart, it's an okay movie.
The villains (a trio of women) are quite underwhelming. It all just lacks imagination. And Zegler's acting is noticeably weak. She overacts everything, like a boxer who telegraphs every hit, her reactions feel so predictable. Acting is the kind of thing you only tend to notice when it's either very good or very bad. Some of the actors (including Zachary Levi) are good, but Zegler is bad.
With very low expectations, this movie was alright. I didn't hate it and I got something out of it. But in that sense it met my low expectations, with no risk of exceeding them. It's disappointing that they couldn't take the ideas/material from Shazam! And actually build something more interesting.
The advantage of a sequel is that you can learn from your mistakes, remove the boring stuff, double down on the best stuff and take it in new directions. But too often the sequel only exists to repeat the formula of the original and make money, including this movie.
The special effects are good but the surrounding filmmaking elements do nothing with them. There is no imagination, no excitement. It's clear that the actors have nothing to play off of. It's clear that nobody feels there's anything special about this movie or its events. It's very by-the-numbers. I still generally enjoy the tone, characters and monsters, etc., but it's passionless.
It does feel a bit woke in terms of trying to have 3 female villains and other female heroes. It's just become so trite at this point. Always nerfing the male heroes and artificially replacing them with females who are just automatically strong, wise and basically perfect. It's dull is all. It could work, but not if every movie does it with the same lack of creativity or sincerity. And I don't think audiences like it. There's nothing wrong with the strong male hero rescuing the beautiful damsel in distress.
Full disclosure, I saw the first half of this on a plane. But it kept me entertained and distracted from the turbulence for long enough. And the fact that I remembered where I was up to and bothered to finish it is a point in its favour. It's better than most superhero movies coming out these days, but that's a frightfully low standard, unfortunately. Especially if you like funny, light-hearted, silly, chaotic action, with a bit of heart, it's an okay movie.