Dragonball Evolution
Kamehame blah
With a mixture of excitement and dread I rented Dragonball: Evolution. Going in with low expectations can help sometimes. I’ve been surprised by movies that I thought would be horrible before. I was hoping that I would be pleasantly surprised this time too.
I wasn’t.
It wasn’t as bad as I feared it would be. There’s a decent sci-fi martial arts movie in there somewhere. It’s just not a Dragonball movie. It’s like Dragonball, but it’s not Dragonball.
I think it ended up being a Dragonball facsimile in an attempt to make more money. Not content to turn Dragonball into a movie, the makers tweaked it. Not a single character in the movie escaped being adjusted.
It doesn’t matter that Dragonball is one of the most popular manga and anime franchises of all time. Forget that Dragonball is one of the reasons that anime started to become mainstream entertainment. Nah. What we really need is a high school action comedy. We’ll just shove the characters into generic character molds and no one will notice.
Not All Bad
There are moments scattered throughout the movie that give you a glimpse of what a real Dragonball movie would be like. A scene here, a shot there or a line delivered perfectly tease the fandom part of the brain. We’re seduced into believing that the movie is about to correct it’s previous mistakes and become what we all had hoped to see. Dragonball in live action.
Then the moment fades.
The times when things are right are so few that they only serve to highlight the areas where the movie didn’t live up to it’s potential.
Is it worth it?
I recommend renting Dragonball: Evolution. There are enough good bits to make it worth renting. You’ll have to decide for yourself if you think there are enough of those good bits to purchase a copy of your own.
Live Action, Reviews, Movie, manga, Anime, Dragonball, Dragonball: Evolution
November 22nd, 2009 at 4:33 pm
GREAT POST,I love the movie but i thought it could have been much better.But its okat DBZ RULES