It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a kid in a red suit granted super powers by an ancient wizard! It’s Shazam!

This DC character dates all the way back to 1939 and while he’s had his own TV show and cartoons over the years, he’s been more or less a background character in the DC line-up. He’s even a Justice League member but the likes of Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern and Superman always take up more attention. It’s with this movie that he gets put front and center.

Billy Batson is a 14 year old foster kid who’s been bouncing around the system since his single mother disappeared when he was around 6 years old. Billy understandably has a hole in his heart from this traumatic event and when we meet him, he’s run from a foster home in search for his mother. He gets caught and is once again sent to another foster home, this one with a young couple and 5 other foster kids aged 7-17. Billy is pretty stand-offish in this environment and one of the kids, Freddy, does his best to bring Billy into the family fold.

At the same time, the Wizard is looking for his Chosen One, a person pure of heart to absorb his amazing powers and defend Earth from the Seven Deadly Sins. He discovers Billy and it changes his life (understatement of the year).

A combination of Superman and the classic Tom Hank’s movie, Big, Shazam! is a ton of fun. It’s a good mixture of humor, action, and drama that uses the superhero mythos to wrap the story in adventure and character development. Along with Superman, there’s a side dose of Spider-man. An average person becomes extraordinary after one chance event. For every problem he has, he can practically punch his way through it now. And for someone dealing with anger and abandonment, that’s an even greater challenge to manage. These powers, as Billy quickly finds out, are dangerous. When he says “Shazam!” and transforms from kid to super being, it’s a lot of responsibility.

There’s a lot of kid fantasy going on this movie. If you could fly, had incredible strength, and could fire lightning out of your hands, what would you do? Freddy is next to Billy through all of this and together they figure out what Billy can do. Freddy has to watch on the sidelines though, watching his new friend flounder and struggle with these abilities he would love to have. They argue too after Billy inadvertently causes more harm than good and gets the attention of a supervillain, Dr. Sivana, who has become obsessed to claim the powers of Shazam after the wizard denied him the chance decades years ago.

There’s a lot to like in Shazam. It looks fantastic, the special effects are all around very good. There are some killer hero shots spread around (my favorite being when Billy jumps off an apartment roof and transforming just as he starts to fall and flies off like a boss to save the world) and the action scenes, while rather infrequent, offer something different each time. I really like Dr. Sivana, his set up is pretty dark and motivation works well to me. I was really suprised at how intense the movie got, there’s some scary imagery for the younger set to witness here. The movie walks a line of showing that there are big stakes at play, but it never gets gruesome. The humor balances things out as well too, the entire cast (especially Zachary Levi as Shazam) looks like they had a lot of fun making this.

My only complaint is that the beginning drags a bit. It’s an origin story so there’s a lot of set up and if you’ve seen the trailer you basically know every beat. But once it really gets going, the last half really flexes and the movie never looks back. I think all the build up has a great payoff at the end as the finale surprised me in it’s direction and was a lot of fun to watch.

Finally, kudos to the writer for taking an interesting and rather daring take on family. Billy’s history is an example that very few get born into what I will–for the sake of convenience–call a normal family. Some never know their mother, their father, or both. They may be raised by grand parents or people they have no blood relation to. And then there is life itself which throws more at you than you can ever imagine along the way. It’s Billy’s quest to find his family that sticks with you most. Your family doesn’t begin and end with the one you are born into, it expands into the one you make when you open up your heart to others.