For those who don’t know, the main character of dragon ball is a martial artist named Goku. Very powerful, noble, somewhat naïve, yet always ready to defend Earth, he is the picture of the muscular martial artist with a heart of gold. He was the guy on the show everyone wanted to be (except me – I wanted to be Vegeta). Instead we have this small, thin, pencil neck white kid who looks like he belongs in an episode of Degrassi. Which shouldn’t surprise me, as the actor playing him has an acting resume limited to minor roles on TV shows. No worries, he certainly won’t be in any more films with the performance he gave here. This picture compares and contrasts the two, as well providing an abstract representation of what DBZ fans would do to the people who made Dragonball Evolution if they ever get a hold of them.
Gone is the hero who faced countless enemies to defend his family, friends and the planet Earth. We are instead given a nervous, weak man-child who not only can’t even work up the nerve to talk to a girl, but gets picked on by people in high school. And over the course of the movie almost all of his dialogue is just him whining and complaining.
Next up for mutilation is Piccolo. To begin, they did not even get the skin color correct. Instead of being green, he is this pale, sickly looking shade of white. To make things worse, is the look of the character. Its like they took the Creature from the Black Lagoon, combined him with Micheal Jackson, gave him the voice of Xerxes of 300, and put the end result in bondage gear and eye-liner. If you threw up in your mouth visualizing that, don’t worry. He looks far worse in the film.
And it only gets worse with the supporting cast. Bulma has gone from the perky blue-haired brainy teenage girl to a gun crazy Gothic chick in her forties who sounds like your stereotype emo, with a personality to match. Yamcha is now just an Asian with a surfer dude voice who serves no point other than Bulma’s love interest. Chi-chi, other than being a cutesy Asian girl, has no real fiber to the character. And Grandpa Gohan is played by the man who voiced the noodle-making duck in Kung Fu Panda, in which he displayed far more life and talent than anything found in this film. The hardcore fans may whine about the fact Krillin wasn’t in this movie, but seeing what they did to the rest of the cast, I would consider it a blessing.
Perhaps the one I am the angriest with is Chow Yun Fat who plays Master Roshi. Now I can expect lousy acting from a bunch of twenty-something rejects from the OC, but I expect better from the man who starred in Hard Boiled and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon! The performance he gave is by far the worst of his career, and I guarantee he was only there to collect a paycheck. On a whole, the acting is worse then some high school plays I have seen. There is not an ounce of effort in the entire cast for this entire film to put any effort at actual acting; After all, it would have no place in a movie this awful.
Which now brings us to the plot line. Not surprisingly with the lousy acting, we have an plot just as bad, if not worse. It plays out like something out of a bad fanfiction.
The first twenty minutes of this film made me almost weep knowing how far the apple had fallen from the tree. I was literally watching a cherished pert of my childhood die in front of me. What could be this awful you may ask? For starters, Goku is in high school. That’s right, not only is the cast made up of a group of actors so untalented they couldn’t get a gig on ‘Laguna Beach’, now they try to relive that here!
We follow ‘Goku’ as he is harassed by the bullies on the high school football team who push him around and call him Geeku. Honestly, despite the makers of this film wishing to stir pity for poor little Geeku, all I felt was a desire for the bullies to beat the hell out of him.
Don’t worry it only gets worse from here.
While at a party being held Chi Chi, whom Goku is trying to impress, Grandpa Gohan is killed by Piccolo in such a cheesy fashion that I can’t help but hope that Grandpa Gohan is ashamed of the manner of his passing. Somehow, Goku manages to get to him before he dies where he learns that he has to go find Master Roshi and keep the Dragonball he has safe.
And at this point we are introduced to the S & M Bulma who promptly puts a gun to Goku’s head because she thinks he took her Dragonball. Before she can put a bullet in his skull, thus saving me from watching the rest of this movie, they decide to team up… I guess because the script tells them to.
And, before I forget to mention it, why does Bulma want these Dragonballs? She – I kid you not – intends to use them as a source for alternative energy. Do I even need to make a snide comment for that one?
These two then proceed to go meet Master Roshi who after fighting them, once again joins them for no apparent reason and proceeds to give Goku some kind of training… I’m not exactly sure, nut it sure as hell isn’t martial arts. While traveling by means of the world’s most obvious green screen, they, in continuation of the trend, get into a conflict with Yamcha, talk it out and Yamcha joins them.
This movie continues to drag on, including an awful fight scene, and some more angsty, poorly scripted romance, when at last we reach the final fight scene where Goku and the rest fight Piccolo.
Now, you know you are in trouble when the final fight scene is the worst part of the movie. After some awfully done combat scenes, we get the twist: Turns out that Goku is really Ozaru, Picollo’s slave, which for some reason looks like a cheap CGI werewolf. After going on a rampage ending in him killing Master Roshi. Regaining his senses, he then proceeds to beat Piccolo in a lackluster fight scene.
Using the Dragonballs to bring Master Roshi back to life. The group decides to all go out and find them again — but not before Goku can go see Chi Chi, which in a long trend on nonsensical reactions out of these people, involves the two deciding to show how they feel about one another by fighting each other. As much as a whiny b***h Goku was in this movie, my money is on Chi-Chi. And at long last, my favorite part of this disaster, the end credits.
Which brings me to the final part of this film before I go use a bottle of brain bleach, the special effects and screen work. In both regards, they were anything from pathetically sub par to non-existent in this movie. The special effects were on Sci-Fi Channel Original movie level of sheer levels of how obviously fake they are. The green screen use is painfully obvious, as is the CGI effects. Worse than that is that many of the better special effects are completely unneeded. It’s very nice that you can make a steam punk style airship; Now how about a Piccolo that actually looks threatening! For a movie with a $45 million dollar budget, they could have used that money elsewhere.
Like for example, on fight choreography! Above all else, what the hell were they thinking when they made a film based off of DBZ where the fight scenes are some of the worst parts of the movie? The technique shown is horrid, and the slow-mo used in many of the scenes is completely dated and unnecessary. The Ki effects looked like something more out of a Grateful Dead video than an action film. And what they seemed to forget most is sometimes simplicity is best. Instead of these awful CGI filled messes, have a few old fashioned bone crushing fights. It was one of the reasons DBZ was so popular in the first place!
So what is my final take on this train wreckof a movie
