Let's start off with some of the positives. The art is competent. The quality is essentially on-par with the end of the Dragon Ball Z TV series, except now that art style has transitioned to HD. There are also a few shots which managed to really impress me, in terms of the quality of the animation, however these are few and far between.
The audio mix seems pretty typical, and sounds like something you would have heard in the TV series. However, there's now also a really horrible rendition of Cha-La-Head Cha-La during the intro, as well as the credits. That's definitely the lowest point of the soundtrack. The rest of the score does it's job and sets the tone, but overall manages to be pretty forgettable. I watched the movie in Japanese with English subtitles. There are a few voice actors who seem kind of like they phoned it in, but the actors do a pretty decent job for the most part. Nothing too memorable.
The story starts off being a pretty typical Dragon Ball Z tale. there's a new villain introduced, and after Goku hears how powerful he is, he feels the need to fight him. No surprises here. There's a short battle sequence, but then something shocking happens. The movie ends up devolving into comedy for an absurdly long time, before going back for a little bit of action towards the end. It felt like about 50 minutes of the movie's run-time ended up being comedic, with only a small amount of it being focused around action. There's a few surprising cameos, which I won't spoil, but I will say that as a fan, they were cool to see. Still, a few interesting cameos can't save the movie from being incredibly long-winded and dull. That dullness carries over into the climax as well, which isn't as exciting as it should have been. The whole thing is completely devoid of tension, and it just feels kind of like a dull side-story that didn't need to be told.
Part of that lack of tension has to do with a major flaw in the new characters. Specifically, the new villain manages to be completely non-threatening throughout, and ruins what little action moments there even are in the film. Some of the returning characters also tend to act a little out of character, compared to the TV series. I've seen most of the Japanese version of the TV series, so I am completely aware about how the characters felt slightly different in Japanese to begin with. However, some of the characters still seem somewhat different in this film. It makes me stop and wonder how little research the writers must have did before writing this script. It's a major embarrassment!
Overall, I expected Dragon Ball Z: Battle of the Gods to be an action-packed throwback, but what I got was a mockery of the source material, which tends to throw out any interesting plot in favor of an overabundance of comic relief. It's an overall disappointing film, with a few redeeming qualities, and a couple of interesting moments. However, that's still not enough to save it from it's inherently flawed main story, which feels both incredibly lacking, and not very well thought-out.
I give Dragon Ball Z: Battle of the Gods a 3/10.
