Wait for it on DVD sometime next week
Image Courtesy of IMPawards.com
Director: James Wong
Notable Cast: Chow Yun-Fat, Justin Chatwin, Jamie Chung, Emmy Rossum, James Marsters
If there’s one thing an actor must learn, it seems, it’s that there are films you do for the material and others to pay for the mortgage. Judging on the quality of Dragonball Evolution, this is definitely one of those films for Chow Yun-Fat.
The film, based off the anime of sizable fame, follows the tale of Goku (Justin Chatwin). He’s a seemingly normal teenager with a crush on Chi Chi (Jamie Chung), a popular girl who seems to like him but her friends don’t. When his grandfather is killed looking for a “Dragonball” that could potentially destroy the world, Goku goes on the run to find an old martial arts master (Yun-Fat) who can show him to reunite that ball with six others to stop a madman (James Marsters) who wants to use them for his own nefarious purposes. He’s joined along the way by a gun toting scientist (Emmy Rossum) who wants the balls for scientific purposes. Along the way come several convenient plot twists that anyone who has been a fan of the series will probably notice, and that’s kind of a problem.
It’s specifically designed for fans of the anime and as such anyone who isn’t a fan is going to be completely and totaled bored throughout. This is a film that thrusts one into the world of the “Dragonball” but doesn’t do much to entrench the audience into it. Dragonball Evolution is set up for those already inculcated into it. For everyone else it’ll be a bit boring trying to figure things out. It doesn’t hurt that the film employs enough jump cuts to completely make a mess of most of the action sequences.
While the effects alternate from top notch in terms of the CGI to bad television science fiction in terms of costuming and makeup, James Wong tries to take away from all this by making editing cuts in the film fairly quickly. It seems like every five seconds during the action sequences that we’re jumping all over the place. It gets hard to figure it out while it’s happening; it might be intentional because a lot of the makeup looks bad and amateurish, as to take away from it, but it makes the film’s action sequences (meant to be its signature) sloppy.
What could save the film are blistering performances from a cast that could have it in them. Marsters is best known for his role as Spike on Joss Whedon’s Buffy and Angel, Rossum has been in much better films and Yun-Fat has some talent behind his usual dual pistols. Everyone is basically mailing it in, without as much of a hint of acting effort. It’s as if everyone decided to mail it in early and often; the film has so little going for it that it isn’t very noticeable throughout a bad story.
Dragonball Evolution is a valentine for its fans and a big budget middle finger to everyone else.
