I have to admit, I was a big follower of the original anime series. I really enjoyed seeing this story unfold in a new way (live action). I am obviously biased, I can't tell you what you'll think about it if you've never heard of or followed Dragonball or Dragonball Z before.
The only thing I had a problem with was the pervasive use of cleavage shots. For instance, Chi-Chi, a main character, always has her shirt unzipped a bit (or a lot). In a world where people daily exercise their "freedom of lust", it would have been nice to have had a break from it.
Those hating on this movie are doing it for the wrong reasons
Ignoring all the soccermom/oversensitive kid complaints and the deluded fanboy ravings where people trick themselves into believing this is a good adaptation, this movie is an insult to any DB fan. On the contrary with another reviewer, this movie's okay for newbies but fans will hate it. They got only 5-10% of it right. Everything else was so inaccurate it's incredible. But as a movie alone, it's still rather average. Some of the action scenes look good, I'll give it that, but otherwise, the plot's pretty weak, it suffers from a NUMBER of cliches and, well, aside from a couple of cool action sequences it doesn't offer much. Now, normally, I don't get at adaptations for inaccuracies. I usually try to look past them and just enjoy the movie. Sadly, there were WAY too many inaccuracies in this and even as a stand-alone title, it wasn't that good. Die-hard will find themselves ticked off and yelling at almost every scene in the movie while newbies will get a minor thrill from it, but that's just how I see it.
I have flagged this film as violent. However, as it is an action film, I think that much is to be expected. The storyline is somewhat interesting, and the characters were well-written, but it was all so extremely cliche that mid-film, I grabbed a nearby puzzle and started fiddling with it for entertainment. This being said, my little brother liked it, and while I don't think I will ever recommend it (and will certainly never watch it again), I think you could do worse than watch this film. Ultimately, the messages are good. You'll really have to know your kid as far as the violence is concerned, but I would think kids 8+ would be able to handle it very well.
this is such a scary movie. i cryed and jumped through the whole movie. i am still having nightmairs. this movie is also racest. i am black and in the movie a black guy gets made into a slave. wut the hell man!!!!