If we had to choose one single breakout star among the cast members of “Shazam,” the easy answer has to be young Faithe Herman, who plays Darla. Herman is an extremely unusual combination of precocious and effortlessly hilarious that we can’t help but think will help her star immensely as she eventually goes from child actor to adult actor — she’s like a little Paul Rudd over here in this movie.
“Shazam” gets its digital home video release today, with its DVD and Blu-ray launch a couple weeks out. To celebrate, we’ve got an exclusive deleted scene from the extra features to share, which you can watch up above. The scene doesn’t tease a future movie or provide any particular insight into the lore of the powers of Shazam or whatever — it’s just really precious, funny and good.
In the scene we see Darla having a tea party with the Shazam version of Billy Batson (Zachary Levi), and as they’re hanging out she asks him about some very important topics. Such as how it feels when he gets struck by lightning as he’s transforming into Shazam, or what happens to Billy’s clothes while he’s in his Shazam form.
Then there’s a twist — Shazam notes that the tea tastes like Snickers, and Darla reveals that’s because she infused the tea with candy bars. Which is apparently useful in getting them primed up for the dancing portion of the tea party.
But the best things about Darla come from the way Herman plays it rather than just how the character is written — in this case, the highlight of the scene come from her sickly sweet “thank you” that she utters when Shazam notes that she asked a really good question.
“Shazam” is out today on all major digital retailers, and the extra features include a whopping 16 deleted scenes — a veritable treasure trove of the content we want. It’s rare for comic book movies to include any deleted scenes with the home video release, so Warner Bros is spoiling us with this one.