DVD review - DOA: Dead or Alive

***Note***

This review contains 100% of your daily required spoiler intake.

***EndNote***

*Though this DVD is not available North America until April, I was able to lay my hands on Japanese Region 2 copy of the film.

Every couple of months there’s an outrageously bad film that’s released - the kind of movie that could turn someone off of movies entirely. It’s usually a crappy horror flick or a b-grade adventure or, in this case, a video game adaptation.

The Dead or Alive video games have been much maligned because of their attention to gravity and how it acts on the female form (what is casually called “jiggle physics”). Beyond that, the game is a clone of the wildly popular Street Fighter series.

The only thing that this particular film needs to have to be a good translation is a quartet of starlets willing to run around in bikinis and punch things. But they strayed from that approach by trying to fit a terrible story, with a love triangle subplot no less, in with the eye candy.

The DOA tournament is a world wide event that highlights the greatest champion of every combat sport. Each participant is matched up in a single elimination fight to determine the greatest champion of all. Throw in a megalomaniacal tournament arbitrator and a volleyball game and that sums up DOA.

This film is awful and instead of just letting everything hang out and having a fun time with the bad material the director, Corey Yuen, took everything very seriously. Even the dick and fart jokes come off as forced and pompous. The film has an awesome tropical backdrop which soothes the brain until someone starts doing something and then it’s rapid-fire cuts from place to place without slowing down.

Since all the characters in the video game are such cartoon-y caricatures, the cast tried to fit their roles as much as humanly possible. Tina (Jaime Pressly), Christie (Holly Valance), Helena (Sarah Carter) and Kasumi (Devon Aoki) are the four female leads in this picture. They look good strutting around in bikinis throughout the film but when they open their mouths it’s hard not to laugh at the horrible dialog that comes spewing forth. Kevin Nash (from WCW wrestling) seemed to be the only actor that recognized that this was a trashy B-movie so he made his character over-the-top goofy.

There is nothing good about this movie - it’s creatively void, the only reason it got made was to try to wring more money out of the prepubescent male teen demographic, and when they tried to add some substance to the story none of it fit with the characters. Terrible game, terrible movie and there’s nothing more to say about that. 1/10 or zero stars.