OW. Did you hear that? That was the sound of part of my brain melting. Dear God. I have had so, so, so many hopes for Jaime Pressly. Before I continue, let me say in all honesty that this wasn’t a supremely-super-horrible film. No, this is no Uwe Boll masterpiece. DOA is actually decent if you want to be completely mindless for the amount of time you sit in front of the movie. You know. Like if you want to induce a coma. That said, let me first go through the ‘Pros’ of this movie.

Pros

• The soundtrack isn’t that bad.
• There is a decent amount of martial arts action (mostly wire work, though)
• Um…it is in color
• I want to bite Sarah Carter
• Again, if you just want to see something flashing across the screen and you don’t really want to use your brain, this movie is for you
• No nudity, no obscenities. Heck, very little jiggling at all. Maybe this should go in the ‘Cons’, especially when you take into account the Extreme Beach Volleyball video game.

And now, the ‘Cons’

This movie had some potential. As you watch it you’ll feel it to be reminiscent of McG’s ‘Charlie’s Angels’ series and to some extent even the first Mortal Kombat movie. But for anyone who has ever played the Dead or Alive series, including Extreme Beach Volleyball, you’ll realize that there really isn’t much of a plot to wrap these characters around. And so goes this movie. The plot is pretty thin: The best fighters of the world are collected from around the world to compete in a tournament that is held every year called ‘DOA’.

The very beginning of the movie holds promise. Lots of Taiko drums. And then it all gets screwed as early at the 1 minute 30 second mark because of one of the biggest flaws of this movie: Devon Aoki. Horrible. Absolutely horrible. I put her acting abilities on the same level as a piece of wet cardboard. She ranks right up there with Alexis Bledl. No, wait. Wet cardboard can act better than both of them. You would think that being an ‘actor’ one would try to demonstrate their mastery of that thing called ’emotion’. Unless she was directed to act this way, Aoki has taken it upon herself to toss all of that aside. It makes me wonder if someone forgot that they were playing a practical joke on her when they erased ‘Ninja Princess’ in her script and put in ‘Emotionless Robot’. Don’t believe me?

Check out the following stills (click on the image for a larger picture):

So, how does this make you feel?

That was the only time I witnessed anything resembling emotion from her for almost the entire movie. Yes, folks. She’s supposed to be smiling and laughing sheepishly at the situation with Jaime Pressly in that scene. Instead, she looks like she’s trying desperately not to fart.

Which is a shame, because they’ve partnered Devon Aoki with Sarah Carter, Jaime Pressly and Holly Valance:

So, let’s see. Paper thin plot and sub-plots – each heroine has an agenda and ultimately work together to foil an evil plan – and Devon Aoki. What else would make me feel like scraping my brain with a rusty fork? Oh, I know – how lame this film is when it comes to details. Don’t believe me? Here’s a good example: In the beginning of the movie Pressly’s character, Tina Armstrong, the professional wrestler, is on her yacht drinking a beer. The can is obviously Pabst Blue Ribbon because, you know, she’s all American. They couldn’t even get that product endorsement because they literally put a blue lable over the blue ribbon. Want some more? Near the end of the movie the nerdy male ‘hero’ who has a mother love jones for the absolutely bite-able Helena (played by Sarah Carter) attempts to contact the CIA by using that magical thing called a ‘computer’.

Yep. I don’t think he’s going to get any help anytime soon. While using this ‘web access’ of his, instead of contacting the CIA via the cia.gov website he instead points his browser to www.cia-gov.org. What. The. Hell. Is that something like the retired agents website? A bunch of CIA fanboys?? The geek in me cringes, too. Think about it – he points an application at a website and pulls it up. At no point does he do anything to input that he needs help. He just points a web browser to the site. No feedback form, no searching around for a ‘Contact Us’ link, nada. Sarah Carter should have smacked him in the head.

Btw, cia-gov.org site in the movie looks more like a government website than the real CIA site:

So, Devon Aoki’s acting ability does its best to foreshadow that the acting is going to be crap. However, they do throw in the blonde bunnies (Carter, Pressly and Valance) to sort of give you a sense of hope. And then it happens. You have the signal that the movie is destined for doom:

Yep. Eric Roberts. This movie also stars Eric Roberts. Eric Roberts “fighting”, too. In the movie world if anything is akin to the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse coming to declare the death of humanity it is getting Eric Roberts to be in your movie. Ugh. UGH. What? They couldn’t afford Lorenzo Lamas??

To end this, let me just say it one more time: Mindless fun if you can suspend actual use of your brain. Oh, and I want to bite Sarah Carter.

EDIT: Huh. Who knew. Robin Shou, who played Liu Kang in Mortal Kombat, has the bit part of the Pirate at the beginning and the end of the movie.