Review: Dragonball Evolution

Dragonball Evolution is the latest in a line of comic to live action films (in this case Japanese comic or manga to live action) to hit the big screen, it was originally going to be released last year during the summer however with bigger films out this film would have been underwhelmed by green Goliath's, iron men and a guy running around dressed like a bat.

The film is based on Akira Toriyama's Dragonball series which is celebrating it's 25th anniversary this year, follows high school student Son Goku (Justin Chatwin) as he trys to collect the 7 mystical Dragonballs before the Demon King Piccolo (played by a rather green looking James Marsters) aided by tech whiz Bulma (Emmy Rossum) and martial arts master Muten/Master Roshi (played by Chow Yun Fat).

Dragonball Evolution is a very short film with a run time of less than 90 minutes and suffers because of it, there feels like there were a lot of things cut from the film especially the final battle which is a bit of a let down. The film does have some rather cool action sequences such as Goku's training session with his grandfather and the battle deep underground against Piccolo's 'children'. But with a short run time there's hardly enough face time with the villain Piccolo, to get the reason why he wants to use the Dragonballs. Other things like the tournament which was a major part of the Dragonball world gets less than 5 minutes screen time and thus hardly seems worth it until you realise why it was included later on.

Most of the characters translate well in a live action scenario, but do have a few changes which woks well for example Bulma is looking for the Dragonballs to help power the world in the film while in the manga and the anime she is searching for the Dragonballs so that she can get a boyfriend. However Muten Roshi's character has been slightly toned down although he still hasone or two moments of being a bit of a dirty old man.

Dragonball Evolution is a fun film with some great physical comedic moments especially Goku's unique way of tackling the bullies in his school. While not strictly a faithful adaption of Toriyama's manga (but then what comic book film is) there are enough small moments from the manga that are translated on screen to keep diehard fans happy including a small reference to another anime Shadow Skill at the end of the film, theres also an extra scene after the main end credits which alludes to a sequel.

The seven films I really can't wait to see this year that haven't been released yet

Dragonball Evolution: Based on Akira Toriyama's 42 volumed manga series Dragonball, which was the first manga series I read, the characters don't look quite right but from the stuff I've seen from trailers it looks quite good and has the feel of the manga to it.
Iron Maiden: Flight 666:A documentary on Maiden's latest World Tour, hopefully there'll be a few full live tracks within the documentary, though its only on for one night only it may be easier to catch it on DVD but how could you pass on the opportunity to see one of the biggest metal bands on the big screen.
Star Trek: I'm not that much of a trekkie anymore and I wasn't that big of a fan of the original series but I'm interested in seeing what J.J. Abrams has done with the film.
Terminator: Salvation: I'm liking this take of the Terminator franchise, it's nice to see that despite that all was done, the future that everyone tried to prevent, happened.
Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen: There looks like theres alot going on in this film with bigger villains and more explosions than all of Michael Bay's films put together, it'll definetly be the film of the summer.
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: Don't really remembering seeing this as a kid but it looks good, since I don't remember seeing it I have a feeling I won't have a high expectation of this.
Astro Boy: Another manga adaptation this time done in CGI Animation, while the animation does look rather Americanised, Astro Boy himself looks closely to the way he was drawn by Osamu Tezuka, while it is animation it'll be aimed at kids but I'll be going because I really like the story Tezuka crafted