Time for a little anime. This movie has not seen a Stateside release yet. Pray it never does.

It's widely known to Dragonball fans that the lengthy series of tie-in movies are little more than side-stories which do not, in any conceivable way, fit into the series continuity. They're just there, and nobody really knows why. A handful of them are good, but half of them are laughable.

DBZ movie 4 is just...ugh.

The movie begins with Gohan annoying his friend and mentor Piccolo with an irritatingly catchy whistling tune. Piccolo, being a Namek, has dog-like enhanced hearing, and the shrill whistling of Gohan is murder on his ears.

At some point, a spaceship lands on Earth, carrying a small army consisting of a mixed bag of alien races (your typical DBZ henchmen army). Their leader is Lord Slug, an impossibly overweight, ancient Namek who has come to Earth to find the Dragonballs (a change from every other major villain coming to Earth to blow it up) so that he can wish for his youth back. Apparently he believes that if he's made young again, he can take over the universe.

Naturally, the Earth's favorite overpowered warriors are not having any of this, and it's Son Gokou and company on the attack. A typical series of battles ensues, with Gokou, Gohan, Piccolo, Kuririn, and company handily trashing the henchmen, only to run into trouble when they're confronted with the rejuvenated Slug, who demonstrates his ability to transform into the Unjolly Green Giant. Slug starts kicking rear and taking names left and right, leaving everyone battered, bruised, broken, and trashed. Gokou alone stands against him, but even he is overpowered. All seems lost...and then Piccolo has a plan. Ripping his own ears off, he tells Gohan to start whistling his little song. Gohan does so. The shrill whistling reaches Slug's enormous ears, and he collapses in pain. With Slug thus incapacitated, Gokou dispatches him easily.

Out of all thirteen Dragonball Z movies, this is perhaps the only one that *nobody* likes. It's 50 minutes of dull, pointless, nonsensical stupidity, and also horribly misadvertised by Toei Animation, the production company: although the title promised that this would be the first movie in which Gokou would be seen as a Super Saiyajin, he never went Super Saiyajin in the entire course of the movie.

Rating: half a turkey, and that's only for Gohan's whistling song.