Some bits of popular culture just aren't meant to translate from one medium to another.
Take "Dragonball Evolution" for example. "Dragonball Z" is extremely popular in animated form, with its intense colors, impossible martial arts action, and crazy quasi-mystical telekinetic powers.
But as a movie, it just flat doesn't work.
Structured as your typical superhero movie, "Dragonball" focuses on young Goku (Justin Chatwin), a high school student who secretly is a martial arts master who can spar in twisty, flippy kung fu with his grandfather standing atop parallel-hanging clotheslines, but for some reason has to keep this a secret from the world.
He's nerdy, mostly because of his silly Adam Lambert hairstyle and reserved manner, so he gets picked on at school, including one bully who runs over his motor scooter, then threatens that it better not have scratched his car.
Then the film devolves into the usual action-adventure fare: there's a supernatural baddie who is pursuing these small red balls called Dragonballs, which, once all 7 are assembled (collect them all!), will somehow give their posessor awesome supernatural power.
There's also a hot love interest, wacky supporting characters (including a bummed-up, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing Chow-Yun Fat and a glammed up Emmy Rossum...how far we've fallen), and lots of cartoonish martial arts, fireballs-shooting-from-your-hands action.
It's all slapped together rather haphazardly, and nothing really of interest happens in the film, but I suppose young fans of the cartoon might find it appealing, as I suppose I would were I 7 years old in this day and age. I doubt "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" will be much better, to speak a language I'm more fluent in.
The DVD extras are plentiful, but still manage to be minimal: deleted scenes that are mostly alternate or extended, a martial arts "tutorial" from some of the film's fight choreographers, a "Life After Film School" feature starring Chatwin, and a scene breakdown of the "Chi Chi vs. Chi Chi" fight that won't be all that impressive to anyone who's seen...oh, "Star Trek VI," or "Army of Darkness," either of the "The Parent Trap," films, the "Bill and Ted" sequel, or any of the countless other films where actors have "fought" with themselves.
Film: 2 Yaps out of 5 Extras: 3 Yaps out of 5