The trailer for "Dragonball: Evolution" made the movie look so laughably bad that I couldn't help but tag along with some friends to see it this weekend. Now, I wasn't a huge fan of the series when I was younger, but even I could tell within the first 15 minutes that the movie was one of the worst I have ever seen.The movie revolves around the search for seven Dragonballs by the main characters. Piccolo, portrayed by James Marsters, wants to gather them to destroy or conquer the world: He says both at one point or another in the movie, which is one example of the film's poor standards for continuity. Also racing against the clock is Goku (Justin Chatwin) and his cohorts, who want the Dragonballs in order to stop Piccolo. Either side will achieve their goal by gathering all seven Dragonballs and summoning the dragon Shen Long, who can grant "one perfect wish."The most important thing that this movie is lacking is continuity. Not only does Piccolo waver between wanting to destroy and conquer the world - two very different concepts - but supposedly the only time the Dragonballs can be used is during the eclipse. At the beginning of the movie, this is slated to happen in seven days. However, before long, suddenly it's down to two. Where did the other five days go?! One of the best examples of how important this race against the clock is when Bulma Briefs (Emmy Rossum), Roshi (Chow Yun-Fat), and Goku end up trapped in a hole by the bandit Yumcha (Joon Park). They sit there for several hours when he refuses to let them out without payment. But when Roshi gets upset with Yumcha, he just levitates himself out, saying: "We don't have time for this." Why didn't you say so in the first place?! You are wasting your time in the movie, and the audience is already regretting wasting their money to watch you continue to waste your time!In addition to this, the acting is less than the best. Goku often adopts a monotone voice to lament things like his grandfather, Gohan's, death, and his own solutions to the problems later in the movie. The villains aren't a threat at all, because they're barely in the movie. Piccolo had approximately 15 minutes of screen time during the entire 80-minute film. His henchmen were less than threatening when they appeared, which they rarely did.This film failed to achieve anything even vaguely resembling decency. Characters were randomly thrown in and introduced, placed there more because they were a part of the original series than the fact that they actually had a decent moment to enter the film. Connections were made between characters in the span of seconds, like Bulma's brief affair with Yumcha. Things are never explained, like how Piccolo just seems to know where the Dragonballs are and how Goku and Bulma are lucky enough to stumble upon them with her detector device.All in all, this wasn't just a massacre of a popular series: it was a poorly written and directed film. It lacked everything that would have made it laughably terrible, and instead plunged off the deep end into just horrible.
