Is it just me, or did live-action Dragonball movie have bad idea written all over it? Anime is fun with its ridiculous hair styles, action figure poses and convoluted mythologies, but who in their right mind thought it could all work in exactly the same fashion when being played by real-life, (predominantly) American actors? Dragonball: Evolution isn’t just bad, it’s monumentally terrible. It’s a scorched Earth of a movie; it retroactively casts a pall on anything that’s ever held the title “Dragonball.” As to what realm this ever seemed like a good idea, I’m not sure. But being only barely knowledgeable of Dragonball myself – that is to say, I knew it existed – I’m hardly an authority to judge it as an adaptation.

On the other hand, I’m my usually qualified self to be able to tell if this is, in any way, a decent film, and I’m here to tell you that it is not. Put all loyalty you may have to the brand aside Dragonball fans, even you will have to admit that this movie is empty calories. Fox seems to have a habit of this: buying properties with name value and loyal fanbases and ploughing them underneath the foot of expediency, frugality and the need to turn a quick buck. They did it with The Seeker, the did it with Eragon, they recently did it with Street Fighter, they might be doing it next with Wolverine, but they most definitely did it with Dragonball.

Strike one with this film is the characters, they’re completely and utterly ludicrous. Meet Goku (Justin Chatwin), your typical fantasy film, snot nosed punk that’s perturbed because his grandpa (Randall Duk Kim) tells him that he can’t use his powers and fighting ability to wail on the school bully. Naturally there’s a girl he wants to impress too (Jamie Chung), but she already knows that Goku is different from the other boys. But despite the breakneck speed that Goku goes from standard teenage kid to saviour of the universe, is nothing as compared to how quickly the movie keeps throwing new characters at us. And they seem to serve no purpose other than they’re supposed to be there.

Strike two is the fact that the plot makes no sense. The seven Dragonballs defeated some alien wankers a few thousand years ago, but the aliens are now back and the only way to permanently defeat them is… to use the Dragonballs. Oh, and there’s something inside Goku that can defeat them too, but he might not be ready in time. So Master Roshi (Chow Yun Fat? What are you doing here?) has a big pot made to do… something, it’s never revealed what. Meanwhile, the evil Piccolo (James Marsters) is also collecting the Dragonballs so he’ll have the power to release his henchman? Hard to believe that people once thought that the plot of the original Star Wars was inane.

The final strike is the fact that the film looks like crap. Seriously, I’ve seen smarter looking stuff in Roger Corman movies. Part of the problem is that the filmmakers seemed to be of the opinion that if you just bring the same anime stuff into the live-action realm and not explain yourself, than people will just go with it. But that’s really not the case. There’s a reason that the X-Men didn’t wear their blue and yellow spandex in the movie, and a reason why movie Spider-man had organic webshooters as opposed to creating his own formula. It’s because there are things that work on the comic book page, or in an anime show, that just don’t when you’re bring something to another medium. And for that matter, when was the last time that any animated property, transferred to a live action film, has ever been done successfully?

Dragonball: Evolution is assuredly an unmitigated disaster, where in characters are introduced for no reason, to engage in a plot that makes no sense, all wrapped up in special effects that look beyond phoney. You have talented and charismatic actors like Chow Yun Fat, Emmy Rossum and James Marsters all together in this film, but the whole thing feels little better than big budget cosplay. It’s no wonder that more promotional power hasn’t been put into the release of this movie, but I think the lesson here again is that you get what you pay for. Hopefully, it’s a lesson learned before we get something truly frightening, like a Sailor Moon movie.