Critic Reviews

May or may not appeal to fans of the Japanese fantasy franchise it is based on, but aficionados of apocalyptic teenybopper kung fu extravaganzas are in for a real treat.

Far more entertaining than it deserves to be, unless you're a 10-year-old boy, in which case it's only the greatest movie ever made.

A popular Japanese manga series gets a pleasing if paint-by-numbers live-action makeover in Dragonball Evolution, which half-heartedly tries to keep the faith for its pubescent male fanbase.

Marvel at the fact that something this trippy made it to our local multiplex.

Nearly all the actors seem to be having a good time, and the action moves so fast that you don't mind when something nuts happens.

The film is crammed with treats for old-school "Dragonball" fans, from the inclusion of all these characters (who don't actually do much) to the moment when spiky-haired Goku dons his orange gi. For everyone else, this amounts to another seen-it-before, probably-willing-to-see-it-again distraction.

Director James Wong ("Final Destination") and writer Ben Ramsey are utterly blasé in their approach to the series' mythology and structure, cobbling together an 84-minute movie that seems to exist only to rile up fanboys. On that count -- and that count alone -- Dragonball Evolution triumphs.

Bottom line: costumed Goku and Chi Chi cosplayers may argue the finer points of this adaptation, but it is fairly dazzling it its own overextended, futurist-teenpulp fashion, and Chow makes a vastly more entertaining Roshi than he did a King.

Just know there's a whole lot more great stuff out there than just what Evolution has in store for you -- namely, the anime that it was based on.

Completely lacking in visual, narrative or stylistic coherence, the film also suffers from cheap-looking visual effects and poorly staged and edited action sequences that will not exactly please the fanboys.