Title: Dragonball: Evolution
Director: James Wong
Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes
Genre: Fantasy
You know, I was tad little disappointed when I found out that the movie is just 89 minutes. We have reached an era where movies lesser than 2 hours would feel rushed, shallow and low budgeted. Fortunately, there are still some redeeming qualities of the movie.
This movie is about Goku (Justin Chatwin) who is on a mission to gather all seven mystical dragonballs to prevent Piccolo (James Masters) from getting them first. Along the way, he met up with Bulma (Emmy Rossum), Master Roshi (Chow Yun Fatt) and Yamcha (Joon Park) who help him.
First up, just in case you don't know it, dragonball series is a really super famous manga during my younger days. This movie, though is an adaptation of the manga series, is modified to suit the current generation. Fans of the dragonball manga might find it disturbing since there were a lot of changes that make it barely similar to the original series.
However, I must say that the director did an okay job with this one. A person of my age would most probably laugh when there's a film that shows humans shooting energy balls from their hands, but the director managed to convey this in a more mystical and convincing manner than in Chun Li's movie.
Justin Chatwin's portrayal of Goku might not sit well with a lot of people, but I think he did try his best and it is difficult to make an impressive performance when you are wearing orange coloured clothes while shooting "ki" balls from your hands :P. However, his final KameHameHa (which is portrayed differently from the one in manga) is impressive. You can basically see him sucking the Earth's life force :P.
The main problem or selling point, however, is Chow Yun Fatt (maybe applicable to Asians only). His presence was overwhelming. Basically, you'll be focusing your attention on his antics and thus the attention is veered away from the main protagonist whenever he's on screen. His presence however did liven up the movie and it might have been a failure without his presence.
Ultimately, as in all fantasy type fighting movies, the ending came in a really abrupt manner. Well, of course I have known how that green Piccolo will die but I still feel quite uncomfortable when these initially super powerful bad guys will just get defeated so easily. Whatever happen to villains that just won't die?
While this movie does not allow me to relive the sweet memories of the manga, it did a good job of making such a cheesy story into a believable (marginally) story for the current generation. Oh by the way, rumour has it that if the movie reception is good, there'll be a second and third installment! Apparently, the second installment script is already finished!
Observation: James Masters is super cool when he destroyed the house by just clenching the fist! Watch for it!
Bamboo Rating: 3.2 / 5.0
Bottomline: Definitely would be well accepted for children below 8
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