Goku and a handful of friends battle for the Earth against the deadly forces of the Saiyans, who are sweeping across the universe, leaving a path of destruction. Goku and his friends' best chance for survival rests with the Namekian DragonBalls , which provide them the power to summon a mighty dragon in Dragonball Evolution.
The inexplicably Caucasian (and eternal bad-hair-day victim) teenage martial-arts master Goku (Justin Chatwin) must collect seven mystical Dragon Balls before evil green-skinned alien Piccolo (James Marsters)—who has somehow been freed from eternal imprisonment—can get to them first and bring about the apocalypse. If this makes no sense to you, you're not alone. Only fans of the source material have any hope of figuring this film out. It always seemed like a strange idea to adapt the super-stylized Japanese comic/cartoon characters of the Dragonball series into live action. Much like, say, Dr. Seuss drawings (and we saw where Jim Carrey and Mike Myers took us with those), the caricatured martial arts fighters of the manga never looked much like real humans, and the ever-convoluted storylines always seemed to boil down to badly drawn kids with awful hairstyles throwing energy balls at each other. If the above sounds like a gross oversimplification, maybe you will get something out of this bizarre live-action movie, but the average filmgoer is likely to be baffled. Set in some nondescript country that incorporates American and Japanese characters (while actually being shot in Mexico), Once upon a time 2,000 years ago, a powerful green-skinned baddie named Lord Piccolo (James Marsters) and his gnarly brutal henchman Oozaru were finally defeated in an epic battle and imprisoned deep within the planet, which has since been at peace. Until now, of course. Our hero is just-turned-18 Goku, played by Justin Chatwin, looking all of his 28 years. He lives with his grandpa (Randall Duk Kim), who has been training him in magical martial arts that we assume will come in handy once he meets his destiny. For his birthday, grandpa gives him a family heirloom - a dragonball (roughly the size of a pool ball) that will grant a perfect wish when in the company of the six other dragonballs scattered around the world. Meanwhile, Lord Piccolo has re-emerged on the scene - exactly how or why is not explained - and is on a dragonball hunt of his own. We assume his "perfect wish" is the destruction of mankind or something like that. Back in teen land, Goku pockets his dragonball before hitting a house party, where he impresses Chi Chi (Jamie Chung) with his smooth moves i.e. "fighting" a pack of stereotypical bullies by ducking their blows so they slam into each other. Kind of cool. But his spidey senses start tingling and he rushes home to find grandpa lying under the rubble of the house (Piccolo's dirty work). Grandpa's last few words are a to-do list for Goku: Protect the dragonball, find the other six to stop Piccolo, find Master Roshi (Yun-Fat Chow) to complete his training and remember to "be yourself." If this were an Asian movie, you'd understand the oddness of the tale—surely something must be lost in translation? But no. In English, released by a major studio, this is somehow expected to appeal to the masses. Admittedly, it's never boring...but nor is it ever logical, coherent, rational, etc. It's fun in a train-wreck kind of way, and possibly makes sense to those who know the source, but recommending this to anyone else would be a bad idea. I, for one know the main source material. Akira Toriyama's Japanese manga series Dragon Ball (serialized from 1984-1995) has proved enduringly popular worldwide thanks to numerous anime films, TV series and video-game spinoffs over the years. No surprise that a major Hollywood studio, wanting to tap into that global fandom with a live-action feature, comes up with Dragonball Evolution - a silly, sometimes sloppy popcorn-light flick that may tickle a few teenyboppers. A mythology that has unfolded over many years of comics, films and TV series is obviously a challenge to condense into one feature. So Dragonball Evolution opens with the requisite voiceover, accompanied by cheap-looking computer animation, quickly laying out the basic background. The final stand-off with Piccolo delivers a nifty psychological plot twist that at least honors the more cerebral side of the original manga series. James Wong keeps the whole enterprise moving at a good pace and there are a few entertaining fight scenes. But there is also uneven CGI, bad dialogue and a host of clichéd moments that make Dragonball Evolution just another disappointing matinee movie.I was expecting it to be so much more, but like they say "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" some cartoons should stay cartoons. A saddened 2 on my "Go See" scale.
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