48. Dragon Ball Super: Broly; movie review

DRAGON BALL SUPER BROLY
Cert PG
101 mins
BBFC advice: Contains moderate fantasy violence, moderate bad language

Over the past eight and a bit years and more than 4,500 movie reviews, I have never seen anything like the audience at Nottingham Cineworld on Sunday afternoon.
The Comic-con crowd had arrived en masse - the stadium-sized Screen 8 was sold out to fans of a particular type of Japanese anime.
My personal trainer (yes, it's true, I have one) has only been to the cinema once since he began to try to change my life in October.
Yes, he is an aficionado of the series from which Dragon Ball Super Broly has emerged and couldn't imagine that I would be able to tune into it.
Well, he was right and wrong.
Firstly, it is not as off the wall as the dreadful Yu-Gi-Oh which left me utterly bewildered and totally bored. But, clearly it did not resonate with me as much as the rest of the spectators.
Tatsuya Nagamine's film centres on a baby with superpowers beyond those of anyone else.
Therefore, to keep making sure he is not a threat to those in power, he is exiled from his own planet, Vegeta, to an inhospitable world where his father (voiced by Dameon Clarke) nurtures him.
Many years later, Broly (Vic Mignogna) and his dad are rescued and things become a tad frosty between our rather aggressive anti-hero and those who were previously rather insensitive towards him.
Apparently, background knowledge would have prompted a few giggles along the way because the sages in the audience had a chuckle in parts.
And then the on-screen fighting began and went on and on and on and on and on.
Broly's rage means that he is up for taking on all comers and both he and they are occasionally surrounded by different colour auras.
My personal trainer asked if I understood the significance of these colours.
I told him I didn't and that by this stage, my sole task was in trying to remain awake. I achieved that and felt that I had ticked off a cinematic experience.
Not one which I fully grasped but an experience, nevertheless.

Reasons to watch: It's a phenomenon, innit?
Reasons to avoid: To most people, it will make no sense

Laughs: None from me but chuckles among the audience
Jumps: None
Vomit: None
Nudity: None
Overall rating: 5/10 (but I'm not its target audience)

Did you know?  Before Dragon Ball was adapted into an anime, it was a manga. The story was written and illustrated by Akira Toriyama between November 1984 and May 1995

The final word. Vic Mignogna: "My understanding is that this Broly is Toriyama’s vision for the character and I gotta tell ya, from the moment that I watched it, I loved the added depth and the added dimension to the character that did not ever exist."

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