New ‘Shazam!’ movie an entertaining ride that doesn’t go anywhere

I recently started riding an exercise bike every day. The experience goes thusly: I get on the bike, pedal like mad for a period of time, then get off the bike having worked like I rode several miles but not having gone anywhere.

That’s kind of what watching “Shazam!: Fury of the Gods” is like. It’s the cinematic equivalent of spending two hours and change on an exercise bike, minus the sweat.

“Fury of the Gods” finds Shazam/Billy Batson (Zachary Levi/Asher Angel) straining to hold his superpowered foster siblings together as they threaten to go off in their own directions. As if that’s not enough to deal with, the Daughters of Atlas (Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu) show up to steal a powerful relic and hatch a plot that could destroy the world.

This movie isn’t bad. Nowhere near bad. A lot of the things that worked in the first movie are still present and still work. Levi is still close to perfect as Shazam, who is literally a teenage kid in an adult superhero’s body. The chemistry between Angel and Jack Dylan Grazer, who plays his foster brother Freddie, is still terrific and they get to mine new emotional territory as Freddie struggles to get out from Billy’s shadow.

The movie does a good job of tying together the mythology of the DC Comics universe with the high-flying, superpowered action scenes these comic book films need. Christophe Beck’s musical score stirs your feelings. The visuals are a full spectrum of creepy mythological creatures.

Adding Mirren and Liu to the cast was a good move, too. Liu appears to really enjoy playing an evil witch and Mirren is Mirren, meaning that she’s great in her role.

That said, “Fury of the Gods” is undone by the fact that nothing really changes. Two hours of cinematic story essentially leads us in a circle. Some things have changed for some characters but the overall situation remains static. All of which left me feeling like a hamster on a wheel.

Another issue is that this movie adheres to the superhero movie trilogy formula. The movie’s threats are more world-ending, meaning the plot takes the focus off the characters. The best scenes in “Fury of the Gods” are when Billy and his siblings are hanging out together, interacting and bouncing their personalities off one another. This movie needs more of that.

“Shazam! Fury of the Gods” is fine. It’s a perfectly acceptable way to kill two hours. It just doesn’t really make any story progress. It throws you around a little bit but you ultimately end up back where you started and that makes this movie less satisfying than it could’ve been.

3 Indy Fedoras out of 5

MPAA Rating: PG-13