Director: James Wong (Final Destination, The One)Cast: Justin Chatwin (War of the Worlds), Emmy Rossum (The Day After Tomorrow, The Phantom of the Opera), Yun-Fat Chow (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon), Jaime Chung (Samurai Girl), James Marsters (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Eriko Tamura (Heroes), Randall Duk Kim (Kung Fu Panda)
The Deal: Goku (Chatwin) has grown up and trained with his adoptive grandpa, Gohan (Kim), and is given one of the seven mystic Dragon Balls for his birthday. Hunting the Dragon Balls, which when united summon a dragon that grants one wish, Lord Piccolo (Marsters) attacks Grandpa Gohan, and with his last words, Gohan instructs Goku to find Master Roshi (Chow) and collect the seven Dragon Balls. With the help of Bulma (Rossum), Goku sets out on his quest to save the world.
Thoughts: I knew going in that this was going to be awful, yet somehow, I still found it disappointing. I've never really been a fan of the show this was based off of, but thanks to my brothers, I am familiar with it. The film had the potential to at least be decent given the material, but failed miserably. Everything was phony, over-the-top, and as corny as humanly possible. Where there should have been cool fight scenes, there were unexciting cat-fights. Where there should have been giant cool energy blasts, there were pint-sized flickers of light good for nothing more than lighting candles.
The performances were quite terrible, even from the likes of Emmy Rossum and Yun-Fat Chow, who have both given good performances in their careers. Justin Chatwin in the lead was iffy. At times, he showed the playfulness Goku is supposed to have, but he never displayed any of the fierce fighting and intimidation Goku was known for. Chow tried very little to make his character come off like the girl-crazy martial arts master he should be. James Marsters was not very intimidating as the ultimate bad guy, and he was defeated far too easily. The overall feel was that not a single actor took their parts remotely seriously, which would be fine here and there in the film, but is devastating as a whole.
The one scene that I thought was kind of cool was the fight scene outside the party. Goku finally reveals his fighting skills by not throwing a single punch, while Goku's attacker destroys his own sports car. It was fun to watch, but in no way should it have come close to being the coolest fight scene. Unfortunately, it was. The final, epic fight between Goku and Piccolo was anticlimactic and the CGI in that entire scene was some of the worst I've ever seen in a major motion picture. The background wasn't remotely realistic, and the ape transformation looked awful.
Verdict: What could have been a passable film is ruined by the horrible acting, CGI, and action sequences. It's not even worth a rental. ☆
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