Anime(ish) Review :: Dragonball Evolution [2009]

Director :: James Wong
Runtime :: 82 Minutes
Genre :: Action.

Barring a handful of very well executed exclusions, comic book adaptations are always a hard pill to swallow. It's never an easy task to take decades of story and character development and jam them into the first ten minutes of a feature film so that the audience understands "well that guy with the visor is called 'cyclops' and he shoots beams out of his eyes." It's always hamfisted and it's usually terrible but we accept it anyway because we've got a talky to make it through. And, since as a culture we've totally run out of movies to make, it's a necessary evil.

As you'd probably expect, the same rules apply for the anime adaptation. When previews for Dragonball Evolution came down the pike I imagine every self-respecting anime fan took a deep breath and went "oh boy. this is gonna be a tough one."

...which of course it is.

But still, to take the piss out of Db:E almost seems detrimental to our cause. We're going to have to start suffering a lot of these americafied anime remakes and it's probably a good idea we start learning to live with them instead of screaming "not our fault" every time one shells out an unsuspecting theater (or... dvd rack.)


Now, that isn't to say I'm trying to defend it as good, and lets get that out of the way early. Dragonball appeals to no one, the action sequences range between par and bad, the special effects are dated, the acting is silly (but that means nothing in a comicbook adaptation), and the story is too convoluted for children and too ridiculous for adults. If this movie has a target demographic outside of "anime fans" then it's probably 13-15 year old boys who are a little too weinery to like the violent grown-up action flicks yet.

Additionally, one point of awfulitude I haven't seen brought up anywhere is the movies unchecked schizophrenia with regards to setting. Goku lives in some sort of mountain temple-house yet rides his bike every day to science-fiction futurama valley highschool (a cross between Clueless, Never Back DOwn, and the Jetsons), which is apparently two towns over from a mud-and-grass hut village and two hours from an active volcano.

Still there are some decent points. Justin Chatwin plays a remarkably likable Goku. James Masters has less than ten lines as Lord Piccolo. There are bright colors.

Okay, so there's not much going for it even if you are an anime fan. But still, I never once sat watching it and wondered when it would be over, or laughed at how absurd anything was. I simply watched and did what I could to enjoy, taking it for what it is... a live-action movie about magical glowing space balls that summon a wish-granting dragon.

If you go in expecting The Shawshank Redemption, you're probably gonna want your money back.







(yet still sort of worth seeing once)