Short version: Dragonball: Evolution is a badly written film with horrible dialogue, lackluster action and a sense of fun that’s nowhere to be found.
Screen Rant’s Ross Miller reviews Dragonball: Evolution
When you head to the theater to see a movie called Dragonball: Evolution, you obviously aren’t expecting Shakespeare. From the advertising, the whole thing gives off a feeling of light, campy, action-packed fun that you would hope would allow you to just sit back, relax and turn off your brain for 90 minutes or so.
Yeah, well, that’s why we have words like “hope” as a counterpoint to “guarantee.”
Dragonball: Evolution may very well be one of the worst films of the past 12 months or so – I am actually struggling to think of the last movie I thought was quite as bad as this one was. And it’s not one of those cases where it’s just not my cup of tea… No, this is a flat-out bad movie in pretty much every area that makes up a motion picture.
Based on the popular anime series of the same (or at least similar) name, Dragonball: Evolution follows Goku (played by Justin Chatwin) who carries out his grandfather’s dying request to find Master Roshi (played by Chow Yun-Fat) and locate all seven of the powerful Dragon Balls. He already has one of them, but with the help of Bulma (played by Emmy Rossum), Master Roshi and Yamcha (played by Joon Park), he must find the others before the evil Lord Piccolo (played by James Marsters) does, whose intentions are to use them to take over the world.
Now let me just point out that I very much represent those who are not fans of the source material, and in fact know next to nothing about it. I can say without reservation that I am in the majority – if you’re a fan it may feel like everyone in the world is a fan of the cartoon, but trust me, most of the general movie-going population (who will be exposed to this through TV and other marketing) will barely even have heard of it, never mind having seen any of it.
So I then have to judge the film purely on its own merits, without having the prior knowledge to be able to compare and contrast it with the source material. Some fans of the cartoon may get a kick out of seeing such things as a certain costume or a hairstyle appear in some form, but as a movie this thing flat out stinks. And not even in a “yeah it was bad, but kind of fun in spite of that” kind of way – in pretty much all areas you can think of, it is awful.
The main problem with the film is the script, meaning both dialogue and the story. First off, I can’t believe how bad the dialogue was in this movie. From the very first scene in the film, which sees the movie starting off with a short back story explanation, the dialogue is painful. Near the beginning of the movie we see Goku being trained to fight by his grandpa while balancing on two ropes – and the back and forth exchange of dialogue is like something written to sound cool, but is delivered and pulled off so poorly that it’s cheesy and downright cringe-worthy.
That’s pretty much representative of the entire movie right off the bat – everything comes off as cheesy, nothing can be taken seriously, not even when Goku is supposed to be upset right after his grandfather dies (which happens within the first 10 minutes, so that’s not really a spoiler). Every time a character opens their mouth and delivers this atrocious excuse for dialogue, I felt like covering my ears and shutting my eyes in embarrassment (which I did do a handful of times, I’m not even kidding).
Well, you might be thinking “so what?” Who cares if the dialogue is bad and high on the cheese-meter? The action has to make up for that, right? Well, wrong. Actually, dead wrong. Action is the one thing that could have saved this movie from the abyss, but they even manage to muck that potential up. The action is not just mediocre or even sub-par – oh no, it’s worse than that - it’s terrible. Director James Wong clearly doesn’t know how to direct the needed action (although he seemed to do okay with Jet Li’s The One), and the attempts he makes are reminiscent of a young kid having fun in a special effects studio, just randomly pressing any of the fancy buttons on display.
They attempt to have 300-esque action scenes of things going from normal speed to slow-motion and then suddenly speeding back up to normal again. But for such a technique to be effective you have to know what you’re doing, and it’s evident from this movie that Wong doesn’t. Zack Snyder, although using it a bit too flippantly in 300, timed the slowing down thing pretty much perfectly, matching up exactly with the action on-screen and giving that extra bit of kick. But here it’s used far, far too often for no reason other than to just have it in there for the sake of it. There’s a strange sense that the movie thinks what it’s doing is cool… but “laughable” is more the accurate description.
You probably want to know how the cast did… Well unfortunately, like the rest of the movie, pretty awful. Justin Chatwin is completely miscast in the role of Goku (for some reason an American playing this character just doesn’t feel right), Emmy Rossum is hot but nonetheless terrible as Bulma, and I feel embarrassed that Chow Yun-Fat has gone from amazing stuff like Hard Boiled and The Killer to eye-rolling stuff like this. The only actor who did all right (and I stress, just all right) was James Marsters as (an underused) Lord Piccolo – he’s not in any way good, but, let’s just say… he was less terrible than the rest of the cast.
The only thing I can think of that’s even remotely positive about Dragonball: Evolution is that the special effects are pretty cool at times. Not during some of the hand-to-hand combat scenes (where the effects are so obviously… effects, if you know what I mean), but when they use what is known as “KI attacks,” which are basically blasts of different colored energy from their hands.
Props go to Amalgamated Dynamics for creating special effects which are, on their own, quite visually stunning. Also, the movie is really quite short, so at least I didn’t have to sit through the pain for all that long.
However, that’s pretty much where the positive stuff ends – you just know a movie is in trouble when you are literally straining to think of something you liked about it.
I don’t know if the story they used here in any way resembles the original cartoon/anime stories, but how they told it in the movie was abysmal. There were clearly elements taken from the source material, and it is then clearly a story (or one of the stories… I don’t know, I’m not a Dragonball fan) that may work well in a cartoon but it does not work well on the big-screen. Not for even the slightest moment.
I lost count of the number of times I rolled my eyes, snickered, groaned, and shook my head in embarrassment and shame during this movie. I can’t actually believe the filmmakers looked at the script and thought, “Yes, this is good stuff. Let’s go ahead and make it!” It’s probably just one of those cases where they saw the popularity of the source material and thought that they could make a quick buck by just throwing anyone in the roles, sticking together bits and pieces from the cartoon to form something resembling a story.
So needless to say I don’t recommend Dragonball: Evolution. I wasn’t expecting this to be any good, but I don’t know if I was expecting it to be this bad. Please, if you believe in the magic of cinema, avoid this with as much effort as it takes.
Our Rating:
0.5 out of 5
‘Anchorman 2′ Trailers Tease the Return of Ron Burgundy’s News Team [Updated] 
Hugh Jackman Reveals Summer Start Date for ‘Wolverine 2′ 
‘Breaking Bad’ Season 5 Premieres July 15; Concludes Summer 2013 
Weekend Box Office Wrap Up: May 20th 2012 
Loading ...
* ban fase = fan base, a little typo
Ok?
Like i said Dragon Ball has a bigger fan base then Transformers… That’s a fact.
@JM
DragonBall is not more popular than Transformers let’s clear that up right now.
As bad as Transformers was, I doubt Dragon Ball is going to break any Box Office records…
How was xFormers bad? Aside from them calling Brawl……. Devastator. Any one who says DB Universe ahs abigger fan base than XFormes is clearly basing it off of the Tranformers that is showing on Cartoon Network.
Transformers has 10 years on DB at minimum, you have to take it back to the comic books. Saying DB has a bigger fan base than Xformers is like saying Naruto has a bigger fan base than the Hulk. More proof is that Xformers had better backing and cast and crew than this crap.
@SIN187UM
I think you’re confused. I totally agree with you. Transformers, the franchise, is a classic. (im not talkin about the movie, which is crap in my opinion, except for the FX)
DragonBall is not that popular as transformers in pop culture. DB has an specific fan base. That’s all. Sorry Ciberpunk for open your eyes, no offense.
Cyberpunk how old are you? no offense btw, but tranformers has been around 20 years, did you know that?
And nobody is ignorant, i dont live in USA, so your point is not valid. Youre blind because you are a fanboy but SIN787UM is right on this one, DB is not near to the popularity of Transformers.
But talkng about movies, compare the hype between Tranformers and DB and you got yourself a clearer point of view. Do you get that?
I can’t believe you guys are arguing over what’s more popular Transformers or DrangonBall Z…
There was an argument?
You didn’t answered my question. If you truly know that Transformers has a bigger fan base then it shouldn’t be a problem for to answer it.
Look i could care less which fan base is bigger but i can’t stand when you make a statement about Transformers having a bigger fan base when you don’t know nothing about Dragon Ball.
You wanna know how i know? Because Dragon Ball has been out for 20 years to. And in there 20th anniversary Japan just remade a new Dragon Ball series called Dragon Ball Kai. See i just proved my point.
No actully the Dragon Ball franchise has been out for 25 years.
CyberPunk
LoL thanks for the laugh. Where are you compared sales receipts? Obviously you are a big fan of DB which is why u cant handle the fact that Transformers has a much bigger fan base world wide than DB. AS for DB I stopped caring about it after the Freiza Saga. Further more DB had late start on the international market. I still fail to see your point.
I liked the movie, good paced, alittle short but it was enjoyable, i wasnt bored a second, hope to see a sequel for this one.
Let me clear this up i got official sources that’s saids that Dragon Ball has a bigger fan base if you want i’ll link it up for you. How about you? Do you have any official sources claiming that Transformers has a bigger fan base? Oh you can’t because there isn’t any.
Ok Cyber if u say so “Official” meaning wikipedia and your say so. ROFLxLOL Can u post these official sources that compare the two? What’s that no, oh becuz there isn’t any.
Dragonball is originally a manga series. So saying the film is an adaptation of the anime is like saying that the Batman films are an adaptation of the Batman cartoons.
I’m a big fan of the manga. Having read the entire series in Japanese (500+ “chapters”, hundreds of hours at my pace) I can easily complain about the shortcomings of the anime series to say nothing about the notion of what sounds like a highly compressed and poorly produced live-action film.
I disagree with the notion that the original plot is too big or whimsical for a ~faithful~ adaptation to film. The Harry Potter films have proven that with a well-chosen and young cast, solid writing and production it can be done. I think they could have just covered up through the first Tenkaichi Budokai and it could have made a great film. But then all the DBZ fanboys wouldn’t know WTF is going on.
IGN: Top 100 Animated TV Series
“Out of all the shows on this list, Dragon Ball Z may have the largest fan following.”
http://tv.ign.com/top-100-animated-tv-series/78.html
: )
LOL Please get some real official sources. IGN. LOL hang it up.
Furthermore if u are basing it off of this controlled listing DBZ 78, Transformers 23. Last I checked being number 23 on a list of 100 as opposed to 78 means its better.
Hmmm i’ll give you more official sources when you tell me the actual merchandising sales numbers for Transformers. Unless your just assuming that it has a bigger fan base without actually seeing the facts.
Face it man admit defeat.
No idea of current figures but as of July 1995, the books had sold 109+ million copies and worldwide Dragonball merchandise at $2.95 billion dollars. (source: “Protoculture Addicts, Nov/Dec. 1995, pp. 18-19″).
Transformers also originated in Japan, and at least in Japan Dragonball is far more popular.
@CyberPunk
Lol nothing u post can recover from that debacle with the listing. As I said when u can produce merchandising sales for DB then just maybe I will entertain your request. Let’s see your “Official Source” Ranked it, Transformers, at #23 and DBZ at #78. Clearly to be that high up it has a stronger fan base, even more so than DBZ.
I agree at Leroy Brown. All i was saying.. You could take a good comic, or manga series and it could become very popular.
As for Cyberpunk he has no clue about what he is Jabbering about. You just wanted to be noticed. What are you like 10.
Secondly Dragonball or DBZ has enough fanbase to become as big as StarWars. I wasnt talking about this 5 minute short film DB-Crapolution This should go str8 to abc if u ask me. I have seen better Str8 to DVD films.
We also have to remember that over sea, they have to cut alot back because of money. So in all DB and DBZ are really. To make matters better they have even released new showing of the episodes. Remastered and all tht… They are doing it cuz this DB MOVIE WAS CRAP…..IF U LIKE THIS FILM U ENJOY CRAP.. AND YOUR JUDGMENT IN MOVIES SHOULD BE BANNED FROM SPACE AND TME ITSELF So if anyone hasn’t watched it I recommened u should. The ANime
John wrote:
“I’m a Dragon Ball Z fan and know a bit about Dragonball, so here is the back story, from the cartoon. Gokuh is a Saiyan baby that’s sent to earth to conquer it. He looses his memory and is raised by grandpa Gohan. After Gohan dies, Gokuh is taken under Master Roshi’s wing and is trained in martial arts. Gokuh doesn’t remember being a Saiyan and one of the abilities of a Saiyan is to turn into an ape-like creature called Oozaru when they see a full moon. Lord Piccolo is a Namekan dedicated to world conquest but continually clashes with Gokuh. Eventually, Piccolo is defeated and split in 2: Kami being his good half and Piccolo being the evil.”
OK John, please answer just one question. How can anyone take anything seriously with a story like that???
@SIN187UM
Sorry but that doesn’t make it a bigger fan base. Cowboy Bebop is higher then Dragon Ball and everyone know that Dragon Ball has a bigger fan base then Cowboy Bebop. Plus IGN clearly stated that Dragon Ball has a bigger fan base.
So what happend to the merchandising sales numbers like i ask? you got it yes or no?
@Cyber
I have yet to SEE YOU not some one else produce total sales for the 25 years of DB. Besides no one cares anymore.
And i have not SEEN YOU with the total sales numbers for Transformers because you don’t have it. Stop assuming that Trasformers has a bigger fan base you don’t have the facts.
Me i don’t care what fan base is bigger.