I want those 90 minitues of my life back. You may or may not remember an old cartoon show that used to air on Cartoon Network back in the late 90's and 00's, (Heh.) that went by the name of Dragonball Z, or DBZ for short. I know as a child, I was completely obsessed with this series and used to battle it out with my cousins every day after school so that I could watch the show at my nan's house. So, with it being such a big part of my childhood I decided that I had to see this movie, no matter how terrible it was going to be. But man, I was not expecting it to be this bad.
The movie itself isn't actually based on DBZ, rather the series the preceeded it: Dragonball. A show about the early adventures of Goku and his friends searching to find the mystical "Dragonballs" in order to be granted a wish. The series itself was much more lighthearted fun than the show that I watched growing up, Dragonball Z, with Dragonball featuring less 20 episode long battles, and more jokes with the occasional episode or two long fight scene. This is the movies first mistake, which is that they decided to start with Dragonball, perhaps because they thought it would do well and they'd get the chance for a sequel. Oh you silly producers, when will you learn?
Dragonball: Evolution (which, by the way, I am really struggling to find what evolution has to do with anything in this movie.) trys to aim the film at an older audience, which is probaly the smartest way to go if you think about it, I mean, us kids that watched it when we were younger have grown up now, right? WRONG. Believe me, we may have grown up, but god damn, that doesn't mean that we won't enjoy it if you stay true to the source material! If this film hadn't tried so hard to be an ALL OUT ACTION THRILL RIDE, and instead stuck to being a lighthearted comedy with action, it may have had a chance of not sucking balls beyond belief.
Just before the actual film, we get an introduction that tells us about the Dragonball's, an evil alien named Piccolo and another bad guy named Oozaru. Apparently Piccolo was trapped inside a jar (I shit you not) and now has somehow escaped. We don't know how, and we never learn either. Oh, and he wants the Dragonball's too... well, we never learn that either. Huh.
So anyway, the film starts out with a training montage so cheesy, The Karate Kid himself would cringe. We're introduced to our hero, GOKU! and his grandfather Gohan, who's never refered to by name. Or if he is, I didn't hear it. Now here's our first problem, Justin Chatwin cannot act. I'm sorry, I went into this film with low expectations and I try to look at the positives and not blow up the negatives, but my god they couldn't have picked a less likeable person to play Goku. Well, I guess they could've picked Shia LaBouf, but let's not go there. I've got plenty of time to list why I loathe him in another blog post somewhere down the line. Throughout the film, Chatwin gives us a completely stone performance that would impress even Keanu Reeves. He's not the happy chappy Goku was in the cartoon, he's a little prick with a smirk that makes you want to punch him. And by the way, wasn't Goku like... 10-13 when he was in Dragonball? I get that they have to up the age to find an actor for the film, but if they weren't going to keep him young then why not go all out and get a half decent actor to play the 18 year old Goku?
Grandpa Gohan, for what it's worth, is the definition of a steretypical SENSEI! Honestly, all he needed was the stereotypical needle beard and mustache and you wouldn't be able to tell him apart from every other Japanese film. In the opening scene, Goku and Gohan spar and then Gohan gives him a Dragonball. Hey, cool, it's sticking to the story for the first time! Awesome. And then Goku goes to school. And it's all down hill from this point onwards. We're introduced to a couple of school bullies that Goku refuses to fight because Gohan told him not too (I would start a cliche count, but honestly, I think we'd lost count pretty quickly.)
Then Goku goes into class and starts perving on the asian girl on the other side of the room, and they go all out on this bit. Seriously, the room fades into a field of flowers and Goku start's imagining her eating strawberries in a seductive manner. What the fuck? It's like they want me to cringe. Anyway, he gets woken by his teacher who asks him what the eclips means, to which Goku replies "THAT'S WHEN THE ALIENS RETURN!" Way to go kid, and you wonder why you're not more popular with the ladies? I'm a freakin' loser too, but atleast I work to keep that a secret from people that don't know me! It's common sense! So anywho, Goku goes out into the hall and Chi-Chi (Oh yeah, they did it. They brought Chi-Chi into it like this. I swear she lived with her dad who's like, a giant or something. Fair enough, you want to modernise the film I guess.) is trying to open her locker, but her keycard isn't working. (Keycards for lockers? Why? BECAUSE IT'S THE FUTURE! ...I think.) so when the hall clears, Goku uses his ability to... wait for it... control the AIR using his KI and blasts open all of the locker doors. Yeah.
Chi-Chi get's all suprised and she's all like "WHOA, YOU KNOW HOW TO USE KI TOO!?", because apparently the ability to shoot bursts of air is common knowledge in this world. Even in the cartoon, they made it abundently clear that you need to be some kind of SUPER MARTIAL ARTIST to use it. And then in a moment of complete dickness, Goku attempts to hit on her and fails miserably, but for some reason she likes him and tells him to come to her party tonight. Why does she like him you ask? Well, one simple reason my sweet, innocent reader... PLOT DEVELOPMENT~! That's right - If you can't think of a good reason for something to happen in your movie, it's as simple as doing it just for the sake of progress! Good god. Anyway, Goku goes home (it's his 18th or 19th birthday, btw) and gets ready for the party, even slicking his hair back and chewing on a toothpick, though in an attempt at humour the hair flicks back up, BOING noise and all. (Okay, dressing up like Scarface isn't cool now... what makes them think we'll think it's cool in the FUTURE?)
Goku goes to the party and decides now he's 18, he can do what he wants. Yep, he comes rebellious for no reason at all! Whoop! He get's in a fight with the school bullies and promptly kicks their asses just because, to which Chi-Chi, who I think is supposed to be their friend, doesn't give a god damn and instead takes him away so they can "talk." They don't do much talking though, and pretty soon Goku manages to "Sence" that his Grandfather is in trouble. (Oh, that's right, they didn't even give us the courtesy of him noticing a fire from his grandfathers or something, he just SENCES IT. He's cool like that.) Oh, yeah, whilst this has been happening, Piccolo and his piece of ass (Hereby refered to as Random Asian Woman, because I have no idea who she's supposed to be.) turn up at Gohans and beat the fuck out of him, with Piccolo finally just bringing the house down on the old man.
Now this is the saddest part of all. They hired James Masters (Spike from Buffy or Brainiac from Smallville if you're not old school enough for Buffy) to play Piccolo, and to be fair I imagine if he didn't look so ridiculous and had gotten some decent screen time, and maybe a decent script, Masters could have made this role the highlight of the film. Unfortunetly, he says about 5 lines through out the entire film and spends the rest of it STARING MENACINGLY. Oh, my sweet Spike, what have they done to you?
Anyway, Goku returns to his house and finds Gohan near dead, and lives long enough to tell Goku to go find "Master Roshi". Funny thing is, I don't think Gohan even mentions Piccolo, so how Goku knows it was him I have no idea. We get a terrible, terrible "NOOOOOOO!" scene that is made even worse thanks to Justin Chatwin, who's going on my list of people I want to punch in the face. Next day, Goku buries his Granpa and returns to his home, to pick up some things for his journey when some lady barges into his house. He goes to see who it is and she starts going all Guns-a-blazing for no apparent reason, asking who he is AFTER he's disarmed her. Smart. The girl reveals that she's Bulma and that she's looking for her dad's stolen 5 Star Dragonball and has built a device that finds Dragonballs. Goku tells her that his is a four star Dragonball and she's all like "LOL SORRY!".
Bulma is played by Emmy Rossum and is probaly the only thing about this entire movie that doesn't suck. And for once, it's not just because she's packaged into a tight leather ensamble. She plays the typical bad girl that is nothing like the character from the cartoon, but I suppose neither is the rest of the film, so I'll let it slide thanks to the fact that Rossum is a breath of fresh air in this film. She's gorgeous for starters and does well in the role of a bad girl, but she has her "cute" moments which seem to be a throw back to the real character, not to mention she's the only one that get's close to humour in the entire film. And she's packing serious heat, so kudos for that.
Bulma and Goku make a deal to help one another find the Dragonballs if Bulma helps Goku find Roshi, so they set off to the city and Bulma does some kind of scan for Roshi which turns up with nothing (rendering most of this scene pointless) when suddenly her DRAGONBALL RADAR (DBE? Fuck that for a name. It's the Dragonball Radar as far as I remember.) starts going mental and she finds out there's one near by. Goku says something about sencing "him", which I assumed was Piccolo, but I think he actually meant Master Roshi thinking about it. Way to make that clear, stupid film. They go over and meet Roshi, who turns out be some fucking MENTAL old man who does a silly little dance that probaly would have been funny in the cartoon, but in reality just looks silly and I think I even saw the actor grimmance whilst doing it. Roshi realises that Goku was trained by Gohan and they all become friends and leave with Roshi and his Dragonball to go and "train".
Chow Yun Fat who plays Master Roshi is just... Ugh. Anger. He was just plain annoying through out the entire film, I really feel sorry for the guy, I bet he'll spend the rest of his life trying to forget this role. He attempts to be a funny old man, but instead just comes off as irritating through out, though he does lend himself to the only scene in the entire film that got a bit of a laugh out of me. (He gets on a bike with Bulma and holds onto her ass, which she responds to by holding a gun to his head and cracking some line about keeping his hands.)
There's a small pointless scene here where they meet Chi-Chi at a training spot where she tells Goku that she's going to be in a big fight tournament soon and that he should enlist, to which he basically says "Sorry, better things to do." Way to go slick, didn't you spend the first half of this film pining over the girl? Seriously, what the hell just happened? Anyway, they get back on the road and suddenly they fall down a massive hole in the ground, with some Asian guy with blonde hair who I hated from the moment I heard him speak (Seriously, the delivery was that bad. This was the guys like... second piece of screen acting ever according to wiki, and it really shows.) offering to throw them a rope and get them out, if they pay him. Bulma tries to sweet talk him, but it doesn't work for some reason. Anyway, they spend the night in the cave and Roshi re-tells the story of Piccolo and Oozaru until suddenly the Dragonball Radar starts going mental and they decide to tunnel underground to find the Dragonball that's apparently under there. What a shitty machine, you're telling me they spent all day in that cave and it just NOW picks up the signal? What the hell!
So Master Roshi magically jumps out of the cave (...rendering the scene earlier pointless, again.) and tells the dick with the rope to give him the drill that he's handily carrying with him. They go down into the cave and the guy, who turns out be Yamcha from the cartoon (Funny, I seem to remember liking Yamcha. I think this film hates my childhood.) starts hitting on Bulma again before they break into the next room of the cave, where they find... AN UNDERGROUND VOLCANO!? What the... fuck! What the hell!? Why would there be a Volcano underground? Better yet, why would it be so near the surface? Hell, better yet, why did they just tunnel underground... yet there's a sky above? Man, I failed geography and even I know this doesn't make any sence.
While this all happens, we cut to Piccolo who's all pissed off that they have more Dragonball's than him, so he takes some of his own blood and makes... Mutants? I'm sorry, but I swear that this film just stole an idea from the original POWER RANGERS TV series. What the actual hell. Anyway, Goku fights with the Mutants and it turns out they regenerate unless you throw them into lava. Pretty handy that Volcano's here I guess, right!? So it turns out that the Dragonball is across the river of LAVA (Which we find out after Yamcha fails at being funny when some steam burns his ass. I cringed at the attempt. Really, I did.) Goku starts stockpiling bodies in the river of LAVA to make a bridge, that he then runs across and picks up the Dragonball, only to get into a fight with Random Asian Woman. He kicks her ass in about two seconds, which pretty much renders her existence mute as far as this film is concerned, and then he he leaves with the Dragonball. Oh, and says that they must go to some temple which Random Asian Woman overhears. Good move there, fella's.
They head to the temple and we get a quick scene where Bulma and Yamcha talk about how all of the people here don't know what's going to happen if they don't stop Piccolo (Oh yeah, did I mention how the temple just HAPPENS to be the same place as the fighting tournament Chi-Chi is at? AINT THAT HANDY! PLOT DEVELOPMENT AT WORK~!) and then, something amazing happens. Bulma says Yamcha isn't so bad once you get to know him and he then goes in for a kiss... and she does too? What the actual fuck! Well they pulled that romantic side story out of their ass! The best part is how random is actually is, about 10 minitues ago they hated one another, now they're suddenly in love. I face palmed. I kid you not, it was the epitmy of a face palm moment.
Anyway, while this happens Roshi tells Goku he needs to learn the Kamehameha (Oh yeah, now we're talking, the SUPER POWER BLAST from the cartoon! ...Right?) which apparently is actually a burst of air. WHAT. Yeah, you heard it, it's a blast of air. So Goku starts training whilst Roshi goes to meet his old masters (they have a short dialouge where we learn that Roshi apparently was a non-believer and left this group of monk type people. Anyone ever see that film Bulletproof Monk? That was an awesome mindless action film.) and they agree to work on making another magical jar to store Piccolo in. Oh yeah, and we had a brief bit of actual character development where Chi-Chi and Goku talk, but the film doesn't seem to think character development is important, so why the hell should I! Seriously, the core of any good film is the characters and how they grow and develop through out the movie or series of movies, take for example Ripley from the Aliens series, her character grew harder and stronger and eventually a little insnae as the films progressed, this film apparently decided that the development took too much time away from lame jokes and seriously shitty attempts at drama.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, a little earlier we got a short scene with Chi-Chi in a fight against Random Asian Woman (that somehow, someway, Goku and co. don't recognise at all) in the tournament, and the Random Asian Woman takes some of her blood before forefitting the fight. So now, late in the night, it turns out that she stole the blood so that she could TRANSFORM INTO HER~! ...What? This film is almost as bad as Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, except MK wins thanks to the fact it was released in 1997, had terrible graphics and is a fun nostalgic shitty action movie, in the same way as most Kung Fu and Arnie films are a funny kind of terrible. You see back before 2000, action films were allowed to be shitty for the simple fact that back then, a one man army like Arnie taking on a terrorist faction was still kinda new and was expected of most blockbusters, so people enjoyed a lot of these films for what they were. Nowadays, if an action film doesn't atleast have some kick ass CGI or insanley over the top script (Hello Crank, I'm looking at you. I hate Crank.) it doesn't stand a chance in the box office.
So yeah, Random Asian Woman transforms into Chi-Chi and steals the Dragonballs (she also fights Chi-Chi and Goku interupts, but he get's his ass kicked when he knocks out the wrong Chi-Chi. Which leads to Roshi healing him with a Kamehameha. Wait, WHAT!? It heals people!? So how does that help in a fight!? This makes no sense!) and then gives them to Piccolo, who starts to summon the ancient Dragon Shenlong so that he can wish for... what? I still don't know. I can only assume it's something evil. How do Goku and co. know that he's not wishing for world peace, or maybe a pony? Way to teach kids not to judge a book by it's cover, film. So yeah, Piccolo starts summoning the Dragon when Goku and pals turn up and get involved, with Goku spouting some shit about stopping Oozaru and Piccolo, when Piccolo drops the bombshell that Oozaru IS Goku! DUN DUN DUN. The eclipse starts, and Goku transforms into Oozaru. Yeah, I was completely lost at this point. I remember it happening in the cartoon, but I remember it making a lot more sense. Man, when the cartoon version makes more sence than the film, they really should've realised they had serious script problems.
So suddenly Piccolo can control Goku now that Goku is transformed into Oozaru (Which, by the way, Oozaru is a gaint ape. In the cartoon, I recall it being like the size of a big, big house, instead it's something like 8 feet tall in the film, but at this point I'm beyond expecting them to stick to source material. Piccolo tells Goku to go get the Dragonball, which Yamcha has. He and Bulma run off and Yamcha gives Bulma to Dragonball, apparently sacrificing himself to save her. Only thing is, Gokuzaru (which I'll be calling him now) turns up and all he does is punch him into a wall. Piccolo then gets attacked by Roshi, who tries to trap him in the MAGICAL JAR~, but of course it doesn't work because that would be a lame ending. Gokuzaru starts strangling Roshi and Roshi manages to convince the boy in him that he's a good person and can control the Giant Monkey inside him and... hey look, it worked! Yup, just like that folks, some kind words and you can control you're very own inner giant money too! Of course, it takes him too long and by the time he's Goku again, he's already strangled Roshi.
Here's the most ridiculous part though. Piccolo then decides that he'll just kill Goku with a giant energy blast (Why not do that at the very start and mug his body for Dragonballs? I'd make a fantastic evil villian, no fucking about, just murder and mayhem.) so in turn, Goku responds by using the Kamehameha, which, despite him only having learnt it a night before, not to mention Piccolo supposedly being this unstoppable force, despite all that, Goku wins. Yup, it's that easy apparently. Thus rendering, y'know, the whole journey pointless. Anyway, Goku summons the Dragon (I swear there was like a password in the cartoons, but okay, whatever.) and brings Master Roshi back to life and they all live happily ever after. Oh, and there's a quick scene where Piccolo turns out to be alive and is being nursed back to life by a woman he apparently spared earlier in the film (According to wikipedia.), leaving the film open for a sequel!
...AHAHAHA! Oh man. The thought of a sequel is just plain hilarious. So yeah, that's Dragonball. You may have seen trailers for it and thought, hey, maybe atleast the action will be good? Wrong. This film stinks, and when I say stinks, I mean stinks. The plot is utterly terrible and apart from Bulma none of the characters are even remotley likeable and you'll spend most of the film wishing they'd get off the screen. So what does that leave the film with, if the action is bad, the plot is crappy and the characters aren't interesting at all? CGI. That's all the film has going for it, CGI. And even that is pretty tame compared to some film.
From me, a massive fan of the Dragonball franchise when I was younger, this film get's a 3/10. Three out of Ten is actually a little much if I think about it, but Bulma managed to just about pull it past the 2 mark. This film is bad, really bad. Even if you loved the series growing up, please, as the song says, leave the memories alone.
1 comments:
That is a lot of words.
I was never a fan of the show, but yeah this looked rather awful.
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