We are both big fans of the Dragon Ball Z series and were hoping for a story that would capture what we loved about the series in it's story and delivery but it did not. The biggest problem was the severely rushed atmosphere of this movie. I do understand that the movie was only an hour long, but if they are going to choose a plot that would say, normally take hours and hours to complete if it were an arc in the series, trying to fit the story into a one hour movie did not work for me. My favorite thing about Dragon Ball Z was the slow story-telling, it never tried to jam too much information at once and was always an easy watch, which was one of the things that made the series for me, but the movie was the complete opposite. Still, there were moments that still captured that care-free pace, such as when goku would take time out to just eat himself half to death for a few minutes, or when he was taking time out to be whipped by Chi-chi. Yes, not the most entertaining scenes, but I the shoving of the story down my throat would cease for a few moments during these scenes.
The second biggest problem was the characters personalities, especially Vegeta. Other than a few fleeting moments, it felt like Vegeta's in your face personality was almost gone completely. There were points were it seemed like everyone was just dragging him around (Literally at one point!) and he had nothing to say about it. I felt like I was watching a Vegeta on anger management drugs, and that's not the character that I came to love! Then there was the little trio that came along- Trunks, Gohan, and Krillan (and Roshi and Oolong but who cares). Their role was very boring. In fact, I can hardly remember it because it was just... dull. Yes, their little adventure did help uncover the "mystery" of Planet Vegeta and the Legendary Super Saiyan, but it was still unentertaining and the aliens slaves they helped were a COMPLETE eye soar. Yellow and pink put together on a creature that is already hideous was almost eye-searing for me. Goku was at times rather funny as he was in DBZ but it came off too strong several times, I was starting to think Goku got too hungry and happened to eat some happy grass while out in the woods helping some dinosaurs. Roshi and Oolong were as annoying as always and and Chi-chi was as menopausal as ever, king kai was still being the professional peeping tom that he is, and unfortunately due to poor CD quality I missed a portion of Piccolo's scenes so I can't speak for him, but all that being said I GUESS the characters balanced out to a decent portrayal of the whole gang. Still, Vegeta being one of my old favorites, I was disappointed about how boring he was even though he was playing a seemingly important role.
Okay, it's time to address, to put it quite simply, everything else. Yep, all that other stuff. First, the idea of the story wasn't half bad, and the twists always brought my attention back to the movie right when my interest would begin to stray. It's just too bad they had so little time to tell it, I think even a half hour more would've benefited this movie greatly. The art I was very pleased with. I guess you could say the style was a bit more like the earlier arcs of the Dragon Ball Z series rather than the last one, or two, I don't remember, but I was also happy about that because I liked the style in the beginning of the DBZ more. The music was okay, but my sister did not like it because she preferred the music in the series and was hoping for something similar. She has pointed out in the past how the music in DBZ was like animation for your ears- for every punch, kick, and throw, the instruments would play something to emphasize it. In this movie, I didn't pay much attention to whether the music still did that frequently or not, but it did seem that it was just plain soundtracks playing instead when I was listening, and one of the first things she mentioned was that she was not pleased with the music. The new characters weren't too bad. Paragus was pretty obvious from the very beginning, although I wont say how. I'm not a big fan of lying manipulators, but he played his crappy part well. Broly was a silent type, And interesting because he was more mysterious and he had an oddly different look to him, his face immediately made me think of the blank, peaceful expression of Android 16, but that's because he was hoped up on personality tranquilizers, and I'm not gonna lie, he really needed them! The ending seemed rather abrupt to me. This may have been due to the slight skipping right before the end, but it just didn't have much flare to me, and gave no sense of accomplishment or satisfaction.
ALRIGHT! Last but certainly not least is the fight scene, one of the most important points of the movie. This may be considered a spoiler, sort of. The big fight scene was.. well, kind of pathetic. My CD was skipping through parts of it, but the parts went like this: Vegeta crying and moaning on the ground while spreading flowers about himself to prepare his deathbed, while the mysterious Legendary Super Saiyan ran around with a fly swatter and flattening everyone with his beefy arm that was bigger than Goku and laughing or screaming maniacally, never really saying much of significance. Then everyone took timies out to hold hands and give their life blood to the cult leader, but Vegeta forgot to take the previously mentioned anger management drugs that morning, and at this point his withdrawals and feelings of hopelessness ceased, so he was back to being butt hurt over goku being stronger than him, and refused to share his glowing green life jellies with him. Then my CD proceeded to skip through Vegeta's intervention were he was verbally spanked by everyone, and he made the final decision- did he share his life jam, or did he continue to cradle his knees and stick his tongue out defiantly at Goku? You'll have to watch to find that out, and then you can decide what you think of how the fight ends after that.
All of those elements combined, I have gave this movie and average overall rating of 5 (Mediocre), the individual ratings being:
Art: 8 (very good)
Story: 6 (fair)
Sound: 4 (decent)
Character: 4 (decent)
Enjoyment: 4 (decent) (Although at many times it was more of a 3 (poor) I decided to be nice since Goku did make me laugh.)
And that gives you an average overall rating of 5.2! (r5).
This is the first DBZ movie I have seen.
I would probably never watch this movie again unless I was trying to show someone else the points of it that were not good.
and I would not recommend it to someone unless I know they are not picky and don't mind rushed work.
