Dragonball Evolution Review [Spoilers Within]

I saw the movie today and I want to give a review from my stand point because I'm certain it's different from the general consensus.

I went to the theater expecting the worst movie of all time. I spent the movie looking for things to ridicule. Dialog wise I got what I wanted. It's bad. Cheesy beyond all belief. Painful sometimes, in fact. "You are getting your clock cleaned." ...*shudders*

There's also the fact that Krillin is strangely absent. He could've totally been in the movie. Goku's only friend in school who can't do much correctly. Maybe taking the place of Roshi's understandably absent turtle. He could've and should've been there. No reason why he wasn't.

After thinking about it, I do understand why some of the changes took place. Roshi for instance (the change I was dreading the most) does live on an "island"...kind of. It's a house built on an elevated part of a quarry. It's not pink, but it's Kame House. He does have his walking stick. His turtle is gone, but when you live in a quarry, that's understandable. He's played by a not bald, not long bearded Chow Yun Fat, but it didn't bother me. He overacts like crazy, but then I remembered season one Roshi and thought, "Oh yeah. Roshi acted like that." My only real gripe is that he pronounced "Gohan" funny. He only said it 3 times throughout the movie so I don't care. It was admirable that they managed to sneak 3 pervert jokes into a PG rated movie: grabbing Bulma's a twice and Bulma finding his porn stash.

Yamcha's actor made a real effort to be the Yamcha from the anime. Seriously. He sounds almost exactly like anime Yamcha. It was impressive the effort he made. Emphasis on "effort". Puar is absent, but it makes since. She wouldn't have fit in the universe that was created for the movie.

Bulma was Bulma. She did ok. There isn't much to say about Bulma anyway so let's continue.

Oolong is gone. He didn't really do anything important in the anime so he was cut from the movie.

Piccolo was evil. He looked fake as hell, but for some reason, that didn't phase me much. He fought well and was quite the villain. It was strange that Mei worked for him, but it was also strange that he summoned the Saibamen. Whatever.

ChiChi was hawt. That is all.

Now for Goku. At first, I was worried he was going to be too "cool" to be Goku. I was wrong. This Goku wasn't a fun-loving, bouncing off the walls goof-ball, but it was easy to see what the movie did with him. He wasn't some poor sad outcast. He was just a dork which Goku was anyway. The kids all made fun of him because "he was different". It was a strange way they revealed he was an alien, though. He was something like the reincarnation of an ancient monster that worked with Piccolo thousands of years ago...or something. It wasn't very clear. At any rate, it wasn't the moon that that changed him into the Great Ape, it was an eclipse. Throughout the movie, the ghost of Gohan told Goku to "have faith in himself". When Goku came to terms with his ape self, it became a DBZ movie. Yelling, flying, explosions, and lazers. The last 10 minutes was awesome...er than the rest of the movie. Shen-Long wasn't nearly as long as he was supposed to be, but whatever. He was still pretty big.

In short, I entered the theater expecting an abortion. I saw a C section. It wasn't quite natural, but it got the job done and delivered. A C+.

Piccolo was portrayed as the most boring villain EVER. There was NO drama, NO buildup. Every scene he appeared in I was like yeah, yeah, shuddap get back to the action.

Roshi. What kind of hermit has that many friends? Anyway, I don't care about the acting, I care about his actual character. He was too serious. Roshi is supposed to be the fun loving grandfather guy who makes us laugh. Like Jackie Chun or whatever that was. Not this wise sage dude who's totally serious.

I watched this movie on Youtube. I was expecting crap, I got Dragonball crap. It wasn't entirely crap. The movie itself was decent for a teen audience. But for any fan of Dragonball, it was utter crap.
Like, if I had never seen/read Dragonball before, it would be a pretty cool movie. But for those of us just wanted our memories intact and not puked on by cheesy "modern themes" and Hollywood nonsense, FAIL.