Dragonball Drops the Ball then Picks it Back Up Again

Dragon Ball drops the ball, picks it up drops it again only to pick it up at the end.

As some of you may have realized I am not a huge Dragon ball fan but I was enough so to believe a movie was a bad idea. I was right but I can admit I was wrong in some ways. I liked the movie a lot more then I thought I would. While watching the movie, I wrote down some Pros and cons.

I found the actor who played Goku to be quite good. When I originally saw him I said “oh no way”. Now don’t mix my words here. I still stand by my belief that the actor can’t act. He isn’t all that bad though. He was a little iffy at the beginning but he was actually able to portray Goku to me. At the end of the movie I reviewed a few episodes of dragon ball and said “ok I see it”. Though I would have liked to see younger Goku, it worked for me. At the same time the actor’s acting was very poor. Sure he made you believe in him as Goku but lets face it the acting was bad in the series. I also would have liked a small back-story of Goku's father. My third favorite character

I love Emmy Rossum and they actually stayed very true to her character. I have major cons on this one but for now bear with me. I like how they showed the spark of interest with her and Yamcha. Though some one should tell Yamcha he has no future with her romantically. Well for long at least. I also like how they showed her skill as an inventor but would have liked more of a capsule corporation story. I said I love Emmy Rossum but she made me hate her acting ability. This leads me to believe the directing given to her was terrible. Shows how much bad directing can ruin a great actor. She was way over the top a lot and other times way under the radar. They didn’t build enough on her. All the build up focused on Goku. That is fine but at the same time Bulma is a very crucial character considering she gives birth to my favorite characters Trunks and Bra. I think all these cons and every other con lies on the shoulders of the director

Since I have mentioned him lets go onto Yamcha. I am not familiar with him being comic relief I remember that more so to be Krillins job in the series. Yamcha was pretty true to him self being that he was a complete arrogant cocky want to punch him in the mouth guy. Shocking that’s a good thing about him. His roll was some what pointless but the actor managed to pull it through to make you believe he was very relevant. As Roshi once said in the series “You can’t fool the master because he’s behind you with a big stick”. Sorry but I hold the staff. That’s a pro and con in one but I wasn’t nuts about Yamcha.

On now to Roshi. I love how they wanted to make it more kid friendly so they kept a lot of his perversion down, but they kept it in a subtle way. Three scenes I recall. One where they are in Roshi’s house looking for the dragon ball, pin up girl on Roshi’s shirt, and when Roshi’s riding on the back of the cycle. Bulma says to him “leave your hand there another second and you lose it” as he is grabbing her ass. You see a completely new side of actor Chow Yun-Fat. He is usually the serious role or the antagonist. In this movie you see the serious side yes but also a whimsical fun goofy side. I liked Roshi. He is supposed to kind of be annoying, stupid and over the top. Not much bad to say here.

Piccolo was very well done as in voice and somewhat of acting. I wish they had worked more with him. There was a lack of build to his character. There is so much they could have done with him to make him seem one more evil, two more relatable. Not much to say about him. He wasn’t really there. The final fight scene was quite good though.

When it comes to the story there are a few things I remember. Dragon wars. Very Bleak and kind of makes you go “…huh” or “Really? Really? Come on I spent money on this”. Ok I am going to say something about Piccolo’s Minions. Have you ever seen the movie or the original TV show titled “power rangers” same exact minions. There were a few parts where I thought I was watching power rangers and my god did it hurt. You kill a minion and he regenerates unless you kill him in a certain way. Very power ranger’s revenge of the ooze. Not a complement. For those of you that liked that movie when you were a kid please do us and your self a favor go back and watch it now that you’re not a retarded kid.

High School bullies appear in a lot of movies. They are always like the "I am cool your not so go away" kind of guys. That happens in this movie but they take bullies to a new low. We understand that bullies are assholes but if you say to a bully “I was invited to this party so I am not leaving” in real life does the bully try to kick you ass? No. Chances are, if you’re that big of a geek, you weren’t invited to the party anyway. Ok so Goku beats the piss out of like 4 bullies and one of the bullies missing Goku hits this guy’s car window and breaks it. Actually he chooses not to fight so they do it to each other due to Gokus clever dodging and blocking. So the guy whose car window was smashed by his buddy comes after Goku with a bat and proceeds to try and hit Goku with it. Goku of course dodges all of his attacks by jumping around near the car and in turn the guy destroys his own car. Ok we nerds hate bullies but even bullies aren’t that thick.

I think that the hair and make up was a little over done on certain people. Goku was alright but the Mia character. WOW. Even Japanese girls are looking at her saying “what the **** are you doing?” I know it’s based off an anime but lets face the fact that it’s not an anime it’s a live action movie. Piccolo looked great but a little over the top or not over the top enough. He looked more like something out of star trek then anything related to dragon ball. I think he should have had the antennas.

I love the Lion King reference “Remember who you are”. Okay maybe not a reference but it was the first thing that came to mind. Oozaru was great by the way. The whole point of saying "remember who you are" is because Grandpa Gohan knew of Oozaru. "Remember who you are" was his way of saying "do not let the beast control you but control the beast and use that against your foe." He was far too short to be Oozaru but it was a bit unreal in the cartoon and that was a cartoon. Take like 3 king Kong’s stack them on top one another and you have Oozaru. So they made him smaller roughly 15 to 20 feet tall. Maybe shorter. But he did have the ruthless destruction thing going. He was totally relentless.

Now the Kamehameha. I don’t see why there was controversy at all. Its just one thing you absolutely have to put into the movie being that its Gokus main attack. It worked for me and the leap through the air made it all the better. Not epic. It had the potential to be but to make it really epic you need to full reaction of the person receiving the blow. I think that Piccolo should have fallen behind Goku after Goku landed the attack. It wasn’t epic because they didn’t do that. Maybe they wanted you to expect that though. You did and so did I. That may have been there main goal.

So this movie was decent. Not going to break any box office records and it will always have mixed reviews like this one. In all the acting is bad the visual effects are good. Some things fail to fit in place with reality where other things that shouldn’t, do. This movie is bad for the simple fact that the writers fail to elaborate and that the direct fails to push the actors to their limits. A good Director also lets his actors know “That was over the top lets do it again and tone down a bit”. I am saying the actors did the best they could with the script and direction given. If this movie fails it’s the Directors fault not the actors. You can all have your own take on it and I may watch it again to kind of see what may or may not have been justified here.

In all take this movie and put it on the shelf with the rest of your movies with potential that simply didn’t live up to it but you still like. You may not know why but it just clicks. I will more than likely rent this or buy it for $5.99 and add it to my collection with Ghost Busters, Shrek, Jurassic park and the Shadow. I strongly consider saving your money and watching this for free online. Enjoy the movie. I did, but I promise you will not love it.

Out of 10 stars I give the movie a deserved score of 7 stars. I wanted more story more character structure and more of the raw emotion from the cartoons/manga. Overall Fight scenes were fantastic and very well choreographed