Dragonball Evolution

Live-action caper based on the original manga cartoon strip that started in the 1980s, Luke Perry look-a-like/act-a-like Justin Chatwin makes for an utterly nondescript hero as orphaned teenage martial artist Goku, who’s forced to set aside his school studies in order to save the planet from the evil (and equally nondescript) Lord Piccolo by gathering up the seven mystic Dragonballs. Despite its relative brevity, it’s a garbled and monotonous film, comprising of the usual episodic trek around various disparate and exotic locations where a band of mostly superfluous hangers-on are assembled, one of which is Chow Yun-Fat as an ass-grabbing sensei and who, frankly, deserves better than this. Making no effort to be original, exciting, witty or even vaguely plausible, it may pass the time as sparkly fodder for 12-year-old boys with plenty of sugar in their bloodstream. Parents, meanwhile, will have to make do with sniggering at lines like ‘The Dragonballs are within my grasp!’.