Step aside, “Die Hard.” We have a new best Christmas movie. “Shazam!” is by far the top movie out of the DC universe in its latest series of caped crusader flicks.
“Shazam!” tells the story of orphaned 14-year-old Billy Batson (Asher Angel) who is chosen as someone “pure of heart” by the magic of the Rock of Eternity temple to inherit the wizarding superpowers of Shazam — exclamation point implied (Djimon Hounsou). Over the course of the film, Batson discovers calling out “Shazam” transforms him into a someone that looks like a jacked Jimmy Fallon (Zachary Levi), and he teams up with fellow foster kid Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer). Together, the duo endeavor to uncover the extent of his powers in arguably the film’s best montage sequence of tests from smashing a baseball bat into Shazam’s chest to lighting him on fire, all while Freddy films the slapstick fare and uploads the clips to YouTube resulting in Shazam becoming an Internet sensation. While our pubescent superhero is honing his super skills and showing off for tips and viral videos, he is called on to defend Philadelphia from the “Eye of Sin,” an embodiment of the seven deadly sins that possesses Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong).
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