Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins

Mr. Brento wonders if this movie was produced by the same who produced the Dragonball Z TV series. Of course not.

This is a Hong Kong real action movie based on the first episodes of the Japanese original cartoon (which was also based on a comic book series). And I really don't know if it was produced under the license of the Dragonball creators...

However, the story of the monkey-boy with special powers is an ancient tale known all over Asia (in Japan, the name of the boy in the tale is Songoku; in China, it is Sunwukong; in Korea it is Sonogong; etc) and the story in Dragonball has much to do with that tale.

By the way, as I said, this movie is based on the first episodes of the Dragonball series (which was followed by Dragonball Z, although I think the US version had a different airing order). And all the scenes related to sexuality were also contained in the original cartoon series (without so much overacting and so much insistence on it!), but because of your comments I may suppose they were completely removed in the American dubbing.

Anyway, I agree with you about the overacting in the film and about how poor this adaptation of the original cartoon is. But maybe because of that nobody can forget it after watching it...