Hot on the heels of Chris Klein’s epic acting job from Street Fighter the other day comes a new clip from another awesome-looking Fox film, Dragonball.  Considering the characters can fly and do magic, you’d at least expect them to do something halfway cool, but instead they just play grabass on a tightrope until the white kid with stupid hair (seriously) flicks a beetle into the old guy’s mouth and the old guy counter attacks with some sort of magic jizz ball.  The whole thing looks like it came from the cutting floor of Power Rangers. With choreography this campy and lame, why even bother spending money on wire fighting? They might as well be Polish boxing.
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I love watching Fox fail because they make terrible movies.  And not just we-watered-this-down-to-make-lots-of-money terrible, I mean this-appeals-to-no-one-because-our-management-can’t-tie-their-shoes-without-crapping-their-pants terrible.  Their Dragonball movie has already been released in parts of Asia, and now the glowing reviews are pouring in.

AnimeNewsNetwork (who graded it an F): In the end, it all boils down to one thing: this movie appeals to nobody. It was made for no one. People who aren’t familiar with the Dragon Ball story at all will be so flabbergasted by what’s happening that they will likely tell everyone they know that it’s one of the worst movies they’ve ever seen. Fans who do know what the general story is will be furious at just how unbelievably badly they screwed this entire thing up. Kids are used to better writing than this in their weekday afternoon cartoons. It’s a clunky, tiresome, badly executed, horribly written pile of shame that deserves no quarter. [Coincidentally, "Pile of Shame" was my parents' nickname for me.]

A Nutshell: This is basically a movie that only children below the age of 5 will enjoy.

Nuke the Fridge: It almost feels like there was no script for this movie at all. The plot is almost nonexistent and pasted together with visual effects when they needed to fill in gaps where there was nothing to say. The scope of his film is too small and almost feels like it was more for a direct to DVD release.

AICN: Dragon Ball: Evolution is a terrible film for both DB fans and as a standalone film. It’s not unwatchable, but it’s definitely in the same league as Street Fighter circa JCVD which means you’ll want to gather your friends and have a great laugh together.

Now, I know you’ll say I just pasted together all the meanest parts of the reviews, which is true.  But the funniest parts are when people actually try to explain the story.

Goku finally comes face to face with Piccolo only to find out he is not human and will turn into “Oozaru”, Piccolo’s monkey slave and commanded to kill his new friends.  Roshi tries to capture Piccolo in a magic vase which ends up killing him, of course “Oozaru Goku” realizes he has the will to over come his monkey madness and eventually returns to his former self in order to defeat Piccolo with a less than spectacular Kamehameha blast.  Then everybody gathers the Dragonballs and summons Shenron to wish Roshi back from the dead. All is well and Goku goes back to ChiChi.  She challenges Goku to a fight and the film ends in a Rocky 3 “Eye of the Tiger” still frame ending.

Oh, Fox, God you suck so bad.  Won’t you be my monkey slave?

Based on this new trailer for Dragonball: Evolution, I’m not sure if it’s a movie or a test for epilepsy. “You’re the only one who can save us, fruity guy with stupid hair!” Bang! Zip! Blur! Fireball! Explosion! Dragon!

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Fox just released some new Dragonball Evolution posters, and God bless ‘em, the movie still looks like it was made ten years ago in Japan.  The spiky hair, the special effects, the unintentionally funny grimacing – they’ve set Asian stereotypes back at least ten years.  Dragonball is basically to Asian stereotypes what McDonald’s commercials are to black stereotypes.

“Yo, dawg, we gone hit up Mickey D’s or what?”  “Hells yeah, foo, we gone be hungry after we finish breakdancin and singin this rap song about basketball.”

[via IGN, obviously]
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The full trailer for Dragonball, er, Dragonball Evolution has hit the web. As expected from a Fox project starring a former Real World cast member, it doesn’t look great.  In fact, it looks like a Sci-Fi channel original, or one of those scenes from the old Power Rangers cartoons that were clearly shot in Japan in the 80s and then spliced into the show, but never full overcame the translation barrier.  It has plenty of wire fighting, but it looks like they stole some moves from the WWE.  Come on, tell me this isn’t a drop kick.  But all in all, looks great. Almost as if it was created “not by man, but by Gods fwom da skai.”