I am a DB/DBz fan. Have been for years, and I NEVER thought this was a good idea. Ok maybe when I first started watching it I said “Hey that’d be cool if they made a real movie,” and then I realized how bad it would be. NO ONE would take the plot of ths show seriously and there in lies the problem. The source material, as awesome as it is, is very weak. Carboard chracters with no real development over 400 episodes and 3 shows. Seriously. Here’s the basic formula to the series: Evil villain appears or threat of villain in found.
-Heores begin training to prepare for battle
-Battle ensues, someone dies.
-Battle continues, Hero gains new power level, defeats villain
-Deceased are wished back to life with Dragonballs.
REPEAT!!!!
Theat’s it in a nutshell.

Now that I’ve seen it I can play devils advocate. This movie attempted to take 30+ episodes of a show a condense it into an hour and a half. I say they did a decent job considering the budget and source material. They also kept closer to the source material than people want to admit.
THE GOOD…ok the ACCEPTIBLE:
-Gokou’s perosnality. Gokou in the manga/anime is a very naive, good hearted, and brave character who loves to eat and fight. In the film he’s been aged to his teens (Thank god cause the idea of watching a 12 year old as the protagonist for this is just scary), and yet his peronality remains wholy unchanged. Yeah they use High School as a setting for him, but he’s still good hearted, loves to eat, but instead of naive they made him slightly shy and out of place (which his son Gohan ends up feeling like later in the show). Justin Chatwin wasn’t a great choice but he wasn’y as bad as I thouhgt hed be. On another note though they should have spent more time training as his lack of any real fights was upsetting.
-Piccollo. At least he looked the part. Wish he was on screen more. And with marster’s already being not only a fan but already being familiar with action, he should have had some kick ass fights, but I guess they didn’t want him upstaging the hero.
-Ki manipulation/energyballs/KameHameHa! Stuff looked good to me. The aura around Gokou as he powered up, the more intricate hand motions, and he definitely said it right. Everyones bitching about Gokou launching himself when he threw the KamHameHa, but Gohan did something similar in movie 9 agains Bojack. Check it out.
-Oozaru. So what if he wasn’t 30 feet tall and there wasn’t a tail. The tail woulda looked bad and so would a 30 foot tall were-monkey. They got the look right for the creature, and granted it didn’t look that real it woulda looked worse at the giant size.
-Roshi. Over the top is part of the character. If you don’t like it then you hate the character. He was more perverted than the americanized cartoon version, and yet still had his moments of sagely advice.

THE BAD, and THE WORSE
-Dialogue. Seriously? “Believe it punk, you’re getting your clock cleaned?” Wow man.
-Fights. What fights. Chi-Chi Vs Chi-Chi was the only real fight. Every thing else was pretty much throwing a punch or a kick at the camera or the generic bad guys they fight ONCE! The end fight looked cool until they get to the hand to hand stuff and it just falls apart. They basically embrace, spinn and punch each other in the face. An extra month or so of training and that coulda been a real DB fight. And thats the thing, thats what the show is all about, and to take that out of it is taking away the best part of the show.
-Yamcha. WTF? Personality was right (minus the fear of girls), but other than that he was useless. I woulda loved to see him and Gokou go at it, and knock the crap outta him with the “Wolf fang Fist.” I understand they gave him blonde hair because in the anime his hair is kinda similar to Goou, but you have an asian playing him so I really don’t think we’d get them mixed up.

NEEDED WORK
-The story. It was an adaptation. Toriyama himself said he saw this as an alternate reality of the universe he created. That being said I didn’t have an issue som uch with what they changed as how half assed they did things. Everything felt rushed. Gokou pining after a girl didn’t bother me so much as the whole cliched, the girl can get him to focus scene.

Like I said I never thought this was a good idea, but people should be happy they got anything at all with what the source material was. Am I buying it…maybe if I see it for like $2 somewhere to add to my Guyver live action flicks, and the Street Fighter movie when I get it (The JCVD one), but it was not the train wreck Legend of Chun-Li was, and stayed closer to and resembles the source material better.