Dragonball Evolution: Review By Kenneth Albert

It seems that the more film adaptations of video games and Japanese anime that Hollywood releases they keep getting worse with every attempt. This year has already seen one spectacular blunder with Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li and it seems that long streak of horrible adaptations shows no sign of ending anytime soon with the upcoming release of Dragonball Evolution, inspired by the very popular Dragonball series. I can’t say that I wasn’t a little curious about how this film would turn out, probably because I was a big fan of the series at one point and had hope this would be at least decent, but once again another adaptation takes a very successful piece of work and somehow manages to lose everything that made it special.

The film revolves around Goku, played by Justin Chatwin, who must fulfill his destiny as the Earth’s protector and alongside his friends comprised of Chow Yun-Fat, Emmy Rossum, Jamie Chung & Joon Park must fend off the invading alien life form, Lord Piccolo played by James Marsters, who is in search of seven dragonballs scattered throughout the world so that he may become invincible. Even it you don’t know anything about the anime before hand it may sound like an interesting sci-fi adventure and far as the anime is concerned it is, which is more than I can say for the film thanks to an awful screenplay that is anything but descriptive about almost everything especially the characters who are flatter than freshly paved concrete.

The acting doesn’t do much for the characters either who are void of human emotion and feeling. Chatwin and Chung attempt make a on-screen connection and give-off the impression of having feelings one another and ends up being laughable, but as much as the one Rossum and Park try to establish making themselves out to be more like two hormone-raging adolescent teens than adults. Chow Yun-Fat doesn’t do much of anything either except tries too hard to be the comic relief. The only person who manages to get things right is Marsters whose experience as a villain in past projects allowing him seem like a god among insects making for one of the film’s two positive elements, the other being the film’s short runtime of 84 minutes.

This train wreck of a film continues with the action sequences and special effects that aren’t the slightest bit entertaining and come off as insipid. This fact is quite the sad state of affairs considering that they are making a mockery of something that had impressive ones. Director James Woo and company couldn’t come close to reproducing them and instead makes the film a silly joke.

The whole idea behind Dragonball Evolution is that is was trying to stray away from the source material and become something on its own and in the end it certainly achieves that and being a complete waste of time. I implore you not even bother spending a cent on this film, it’s not worth the aggravation. If you are going to take a trip to the theater this weekend go see something else because they certainly won’t be as horrific as this film, which I’m sure will be a top contender for “Worst Film of 2009”.