Having put out the most joyless crap possible with the movies leading up to (and possibly including, I never bothered to watch it) The Justice League, the next few that trickled out were a lot more interesting than most cogs set to fill out a function in a five-year phase or whatever usually are.
I may not be a huge fan of either of the Wonder Women, but they do what they want to successfully - and in the case of the second one, it sets the movie in the eighties not just as a gimmick, but in an attempt to say something meaningful (if a bit shallow); That's worthy of respect. Aquaman is the most joyful, exuberant superhero movie this side of Into The Multiverse. Suicide Squad showed what James Gunn could do if given freedom to follow his batshit muse. The Joker is an uninspired mishmash of stolen stuff, and The Batman (2022) is a terrible, terrible movie, but they both at least have the grace not to give a single fuck about any continuity concerns. And Shazam!... You know how Superhero movies will often position themselves as belonging to a different genre? Like Antman being a heist movie, Multiverse of Madness being a Sam Raimi movie, etc. etc.?
Shazam! is one of the very few of those that actually does justice to its adopted genre. It splits the difference between your standard superheroics and a teen comedy, and it does it with aplomb and plenty of great jokes.
In any case, that period of the DC history is drawing into a close. No way to know how its new incarnation will go, but I doubt that we'll get a slate of movies with so much personality and that are allowed to... be themselves to this degree. It's a shame this 'no adult supervision' period had to close out with two of the most bog-standard superhero movies imaginable - first Black Adam, and now the Shazam sequel, which unfortunately loses most of what made the first one unique.
It's a More-is-More-minded sequel, and it suffers for it. Overstuffed to the gills, it doesn't have space for nuance or character moments. Much like on those Marvel movies that mash together a dozen superheroes, everyone pretty much shouts out their character motivations and things happen because the plot dictates they must instead of any organic buildup.
We begin where Shazam! ended, with Billy Batson (Asher Angel) now trying to lead a whole family of superheroes who are the laughing stock of his native Philadelphia. He's struggling with impostor syndrome (we know this because a pediatrician tells him, point blank, 'you suffer from impostor's syndrome!' and with getting his superpowered siblings to work as a team.
Meanwhile, a trio of demigoddesses (played by Lucy Liu, Helen Mirren, and another one that's kept secret for a little bit) recover a mcguffin and start wreaking havoc, and Billy's brother Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer) has the most unconvincing possible meet cute with a stunningly beautiful new student Ann (Rachel Zegler). Will a bundle of loose plot elements connect in the dumbest, most contrived way possible? Well, yes; this is a movie where an emotional beat is set early on when Mom (Marta Milans) makes a sadface when Billy calls her by her name instead of calling her mom. All T's are crossed, all I's are dotted in the hackiest way possible.
Not that it's a complete loss. The villains turn out to be the Hesperides, and their motivation is a rather clever play on the Shazam origin story. This also gives the film license to pepper the film with mythological beasties; shame the one with the most screentime is a pretty generic-looking dragon.
The humor is also a mixed bag, but hits enough of its marks that it doesn't leave a horrible taste behind. Shazam is played by Zachary Levi with a teen-like complete lack of filters, and is a pretty hilarious creation even when going for low-hanging fruit.
As busy as the movie gets, it always remembers to be a comedy first, which might be its one saving grace. Loud, dumb, funny is one adjective better than how these things tend to go.
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