Review of Dragonball Evolution (2009) by Tommy H — 04 Apr 2015

I use to be a huge Dragon Ball Z fan and I couldn't even finish this movie. It got the Godzilla 1998 treatment. I mean, they got everything wrong. You could pause the movie at any random second and find at least three things to complain about. They couldn't even spell the name right! Maybe they did that as an apology to Akira Toriyama.

I do like the over-all plot. I like the idea of putting Goku in high school and making it more American than traditional Japanese. I could actually forgive everything about this movie if they didn't mess up the characters so bad. The film definitely had potential. And I question their decision to aim make it for a young demographic. I know that since I'm a grown man my opinion about how movies based on kids cartoons are made doesn't mean much, but when the show first came over to America in the early 90's I was one of the many kids watching it on YTV. Young people don't watch Dragon Ball Z these days, and especially not the original show which the movie is based on. The audience who watched Dragon Ball have grown up so I think it would have been better to make a more mature movie. They could make it mature and still get away with a PG rating. If the movie was more loyal to the show it would introduce a new audience to the great adventure and reward the die hard fans. The way they chose to make the movie just ended up confusing everybody.