Dragonball Evolution

Never saw the animated series that I believe this movie was based off of, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say this was a far stretch from the cartoon beloved by little boys. I do know that the main character does indeed have unruly spiky hair like a Guido and the villain is green, but that’s all I got. Psyched to get down and dirty with my inner geek, I was like, bring that Dragonball on man. Oh, it was brought alright. Not terribly well written, and not so well acted, I was at least distracted by the moments of brilliant effects and fight scenes.

So, the story goes that a few thousand years ago, there was an evil warlord named Piccolo, nothing is more terrifying than wind instruments I will have you know, and his dog-man servant thing who wanted to destroy the earth. They were stopped and Piccolo was trapped by some monks and the dog thing disappeared. Credits roll and we meet Goku, a high school kid raised by his grandfather and is picked on at school. For his 18th birthday, his grandfather gives him a paperweight with four rotating stars on it and explains the tale of the Dragonball, and how there are seven and when they are brought together, you get one perfect wish from a dragon. If I had a dollar for every time I heard that story on my birthday…

If you get the feeling that someone evil has come up with a plan to collect said balls for a wish, you would be right. So Piccolo, I’m sorry, that name is so distracting, has arisen and is coincidentally gathering the D-balls. So the night of Goku’s birthday, he has ditched grandpa and gone to a party of his crush with an equally lame name of Chi-Chi, Piccolo drops in and crushes Goku’s house and with his grandfather's dying breath, he tells Goku that Piccolo is back in town and that he needs to find Master Roshi who will know what to do.

While Goku is checking out his demolished house, he meets an intruder by the name of Bulma Briefs, but all throughout the movie I thought they were saying Vulva which you have to admit is a lot funnier, who has also had her D-ball stolen. They join up to search for the remaining balls and find Roshi in the form of Chow Yun-Fat who is so perfect, I cannot snark on him.

There are some fun action sequences and some cheesy acting along the way, but not enough to have made this a perfectly cohesive movie, which honestly is very disappointing to me as I really wanted this to be the new Street Fighter, you know, so bad it’s good. I’m not saying that this was a steamy pile of poop, it was however, more like a well funded ABC Family original TV movie.