History YMMV / DragonballEvolution

* UncertainAudience: ExecutiveMeddling, in an attempt to appeal to larger audiences, would end up turning against the movie. The movie fails to appeal to fans of the ''Dragon Ball'' series due to extremely drastic changes from the source material (such as Goku going to high school and him connected to Piccolo). It fails to appeal to Martial Arts film fans with its editing. The film clearly borrows more from movies at the time like ''Film/SpiderMan1'' and ''Film/Transformers2007'' but lacking the elements that made them work. Ultimately, this made the movie fail to find ''any'' audience.

** Chi-Chi and Goku's final scene is clearly intended to evoke Rocky 3's finale, but although Apollo and Rocky were equal rivals, Goku is so out of Chi-Chi's league that it makes the scene ridiculous rather than exciting, knowing that Goku could probably win in less than 15 seconds.

* UncertainAudience: ExecutiveMeddling, in an attempt to appeal to larger audiences, would end up turning against the movie. The movie fails to appeal to fans of the ''Dragon Ball'' series due to extremely drastic changes from the source material (such as Goku going to high school and him connected to Piccolo). It fails to appeal to Martial Arts film fans with its editing. The film clearly borrows more from movies at the time like ''Film/SpiderMan1'' and ''Film/{{Transformers}}'' but lacking the elements that made them work. Ultimately, this made the movie fail to find ''any'' audience.

* CriticalDissonance: The movie has gotten extremely negative reviews, with a 15% on Website/RottenTomatoes and a 2.5 on Website/{{IMDb}} with it being #17 on the Bottom 100 Rated Movies, yet somehow has a "mixed" Metacritic score of 45.

* WTHCastingAgency: Pretty much all the casting choices (excluding Creator/JamesMarsters and Creator/ChowYunFat) in this movie are bad, but one weird example is Creator/ErnieHudson as a movie exclusive character, Sifu Norris. Although some point out while Creator/JustinChatwin and Creator/JamieChung don't exactly bring to mind Goku and Chi Chi, they ''absolutely'' scream Gohan and Videl (to the point that Chi Chi flat out wears Videl's high school outfit in the second act of the film)

* OlderThanTheyThink: The whole idea of "[[RecycledInSpace Dragon Ball but in High School]]" is not that dumb, taking into account that although Goku never went to school, this is part of Goku's son Gohan's story (some might say it is dumb, but the right kind of dumb).

--->'''Marsters:''' He used to be a force of good, but he was imprisoned, making him very angry, and then he escapes... The cool thing is anybody who's seen Dragon Ball knows that Lord Piccolo transforms into THE Piccolo, and that is a whole other ball of wax; heroic wouldn't be the wrong term, but it's a long journey.

* TheyCopiedItSoItSucks: Another reason the movie was critically panned was because of how elements are blatantly ripped off from Film/SpiderMan1.

* TookTheBadFilmSeriously:
** Creator/JamesMarsters didn't appear to take his role of Piccolo too seriously in practice; however, he did give several long-winded speeches on the character's motivations, referencing Creator/WilliamShakespeare in one of them and treating the role as a CompositeCharacter of Piccolo and Kami (who were technically the same being anyway). It's obvious he's referring to the original script before ExecutiveMeddling tore it all to hell. Still, he gives a downright subtle and restrained performance compared to most everyone else in the film.

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: It is perfectly understandable that changes have to be made when adapting an [[Manga/DragonBall manga and anime]] to the big screen, but most of the changes only serve to make this adaptation more generic. For instance, by making Bulma an ActionGirl, Chi-Chi a LoveInterest and Goku [[IJustWantToBeNormal an angsty teenager]], they just make classic characters more forgettable.
** The changes were so numerous and so arbitrary that WebVideo/ChrisStuckmann claimed that even when the film does follow the source material, it seems weirdly out of place.
** When WebVideo/CinemaSins reviewed the film, due to just ''how'' many requests they'd gotten, they made an exception to their rule about not doing research about the source material, resulting in the film's sin count going from 177 to ''9518''.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZqCc82rC4c Some reviewers have noted]] that the film does have some good ideas to make a competent, well-made action-comedy, but fails to capitalize on them because of a toxic mixture of ExecutiveMeddling, shallow talent pools, and an anemic lack of ambition.
** For that matter, if they were trying to make it a ''Dragon Ball'' movie, there's several places that they could've used actual elements from ''Dragon Ball'' - i.e., reviving Goku with Sensu Beans instead of the Kamehameha (which '''[[CriticalResearchFailure isn't even a healing technique]]''' in the source material), using the Power Pole to get out of the hole Yamcha had trapped them in, and so on.

* TheProblemWithLicensedGames: Rather fittingly, the movie's tie-in PSP game was lambasted by critics, and is considered one of the worst ''Dragon Ball'' games of all time, attempting to copy the ''VideoGame/DragonBallZBudokai'' series' formula but dumbing it down severely -- just like with the movie itself. It attempts to be more loyal to the manga by having Piccolo reveal that Goku is a Saiyan and calling him "Kakarot" without explaining how Piccolo knows this. Interestingly, the game is currently the only one in which you can choose Bulma as a fighter.

* SoBadItsGood: Most of the reactions were negative, even from those who never saw the animated series. That said, it can be enjoyable. A small minority think it [[SoOkayItsAverage was a decent film in its own right]], to the point it could be considered an okay film had it not had the ''Dragon Ball'' name, and as stated above, a lot of people in Asia love the film.

* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: Naturally, it did well in Asia (outside of Japan where it lost to ''Anime/{{Yatterman}}''), going number one early on before dropping off. It should be noted that it was number one for several ''weeks'' at Asian box offices, and while the reception was mixed it is still rather popular and well-liked outside the US.

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: It is perfectly understandable that changes have to be made when adapting an [[Manga/DragonBall anime]] to the big screen, but most of the changes only serve to make this adaptation more generic. For instance, by making Bulma an ActionGirl, Chi-Chi a LoveInterest and Goku [[IJustWantToBeNormal an angsty teenager]], they just make classic characters more forgettable.

* TheyChangedItSoItSucks: It is perfectly understandable that changes have to be made when adapting an [[Manga/DragonBall anime]] to the big screen, but most of the changes only serve to make this adaptation more generic. For instance, by making Bulma an ActionGirl, Chi-Chi a LoveInterest and Goku [[IJustWantToBeNormal an angsty teenager]], they just make classic characters more forgettable.

** Even funnier, the character James Masters voices is Zamasu who even has green skin just like Piccolo. [[spoiler:Goku Black is Goku possessed by a version of Zamasu]]