Dragonball Evolution

Dragonball Evolution is a 2009 American live-action film adaptation based upon the Japanese Dragonball media franchise, directed by James Wong, produced by Stephen Chow and distributed by 20th Century Fox. The story centers around the adventures of the lead character, Goku, (Justin Chatwin) who on his 18th birthday, is asked to gather the seven Dragonballs in order to save the world from the evil alien Piccolo (James Marsters). On his journey, he meets several other characters that aid him in his quest. From the release of the very first trailer, all indications were that the movie was going to be horrible, and despite a decent basic premise, it is. From the murky art direction to the jumbled mess of a script, poor acting and hopeless directing, this movie is a beyond terrible.

One of the most striking aspects of the movie is how inappropiately casted most of the characters are. Goku is the most notable example. You do not expect the transition from a cartoon to a live-action movie to be without major changes, but the Goku in Dragonball Evolution shares nothing in common with his anime counterpart. In the cartoon, he is a young, happy, energetic boy who rides across the land on his magical cloud, full of self-belief and spirit. Justin Chatwin's Goku is a miserable emo who rides a bike to school and gets picked on by the 'cooler' kids. Other characters are similarly miscasted, Marster's Piccolo is perhaps being the closest to resemble the character from the cartoon, but seeing as how he gets roughly 10 minutes of screen time in the whole movie, you're never given the chance to appreciate any aspect of his performance.

The down right god awful acting. The movie features some of the poorest performances I've ever seen. Chatwin chops through the clunky badly written script, in a performance so wooden it would embarrass most items of furniture. Emmy Rossum (Bulma), Jamie Chung (Chi Chi) and Eriko Tamura (Mai) establish little if any personality for their respective characters, and Joon Park's Yamcha is a disaster. Even the talented Chow Yun Fat fails to restore any credibility to it, he just smiles as he walks away with his fat paycheck.

I personally see few if any redeemable features to this movie, but I can understand why some might enjoy it, particularly a younger audience. At 90-minutes, the pain is short, and one can't accuse the movie of dragging, there's always *something* happening, regardless of whether it's good quality entertainment or not. Some may see it in the special effects, I personally think, like the rest of the movie they're awful, but the sheer brightness and flashiness may be enough to wow some viewers ( known as 12 year olds). The fight scenes as well, while undeniably cheesy are not terribly executed, just a little cliché.

In the end of it all, this movie basically is for no one, I really don't understand how someone can like this, it honestly doesn't appeal to anyone. This movie was made for nothing but the money. The people who will go and watch this movie and have no knowledge of the Dragon Ball story will be so confused by what there watching, they will most likely tell everyone it is one of the worst movies.