IF YOU?RE an eight-year-old boy, you?ll probably love ?Dragonball Evolution.? There are lots of fight scenes, good guys giving flying kicks to bad guys, blazing fireballs, colorful mystic thingums?what?s not to like? If you haven?t been near that age for some time, however, it might take you a while to appreciate the movie, and many of us who?re well past the adolescent stage probably won?t.
The trick to enjoying this newest take on Akira Toriyama?s story and characters, which started out as a manga series in the ?80s and has since spawned a successful franchise, is to not take it seriously. If you do, you?ll find many things to object to?inconsistencies, holey plots, laughable dialogue, to name a few?and, you?ll go home thinking you just wasted your hard-earned money. That?s not a good thing, what with the economic recession and all. So, just let your brain stop working for an hour and 40 minutes, and you?ll get the viewing pleasure you paid for.
Special effects
You?ll also fare better if you watch it with a ?Dragonball? fan and/or an 8-year-old. You can amuse yourself with the former?s grumbling and get infected with the latter?s clear enjoyment of just about everything in this zany, fast-moving movie, where the plot is nothing short of crazy and the special effects will have you thinking nostalgically of those tokusatsu TV shows you couldn?t get enough of in the ?80s.
Directed by James Wong (?Final Destination?) from a screenplay by Ben Ramsey, this actioner was produced by Stephen Chow of ?Shaolin Soccer? and ?Kung Fu Hustle? fame, and you?ll recognize his touch in the fight scenes and the movie?s tending-toward-manic pace.
The plot is a classic quest?Goku (Justin Chatwin) has to find seven dragonballs, which, when combined, will summon a dragon who will then grant whoever called him a perfect wish. He needs to get to the dragonballs before the evil being, Piccolo (James Marsters), who has escaped from the prison where he was immured for 2,000 years, finds them and uses them against the world.
Quest
The quest is personal, too, since Piccolo killed Goku?s grandfather, Gohan (Randall Duk Kim). In his journey, he is joined by Bulma (Emmy Rossum), a gun-toting inventor; Hawaiian-shirted Master Roshi (Chow Yun-Fat), his grandfather?s teacher, and Yamcha (Joon Park), a thief. His love interest, Chi Chi (Jamie Chung), stars in a subplot.
Change
If you don?t know anything about ?Dragon Ball??the manga, the animé, etc.?you?ll probably feel a little lost in this loopy, goofy world. Even fans of the franchise will have a hard time digesting the mishmash that the filmmakers have come up with. It?s just too different from the original, partly because of the genre change and also because, believe it or not, it isn?t silly enough. ?Dragon Ball? has always been about humor and goofing off and, while its screen version tries, it doesn?t quite succeed.
