I walk up to my friends, who are bunched up outside the cinema, lining up and handing their tickets over to the ticket person.

And with deliciously dark glee, I hoot right behind them. "LET'S WATCH THIS PIECE OF SHIT!"

They turn to me, grin, nod, and slap me fives.

If there was any way any of us were going to see this thing, it was to see it as a group. We had grown up reading, watching, and playing Dragon Ball. We were the kids who'd razzle you as a quick five-button combination on the SNES pulled off a Kame-hame-ha on your pathetically controlled Dragon Ball avatar (Cell? Broli?? You guys are LAME). We'd rat off all the inane conventions of death-resurrection-death-resurrection of every series (What, Goku has three halos?!). We knew every epic Dragon Ball bad guy even from reverse chronological order ("Majin-boo before Kid-boo, moron", "Wait, I thought this was in reverse chronological order?"). And we'd be damned if we weren't catching the Hollywood adaptation, to satiate the combined behemoth of sarcasm, snark, curiosity, and sadism.

The lights dim, the snickering and giggling give way to silence, the Fox Studios opening graphics roll, and a pause falls on the theater.

I fire the first riff.

"Cha-la, hed-cha-la."

Snorted laughter. My friends to both sides snicker through covered mouths. "That's one", my friend says to me. "That's one", repeats another, emphasized with a raised finger.

We are keeping score. "Plus thirty points if you piss off a member of the audience", my other friend said earlier.

And the riffs roll in with the movie...

Goku trains with his master.

"Flash kick! Oh yeah, that was a Flash Kick alright."

Goku's bike gets totalled by a yellow Camarro driven by school bullies.

"Nice going, Bumblebee."

Chi-Chi invites Goku to her party. Awkward romantic tension.

"Alright, let's make Gohan."

Piccolo appears on screen. The girls of our group swoon.

"Spike!"

"SPIKE!"

Goku opens the inheritance chest of his fallen master, revealing the orange training costume.

"Grandpa was a cosplayer?!"

Bulma shows up, threatening to blow Goku's head off if he doesn't hand her his four-star Dragon Ball.

"What the hell. She's using the Batman voice!"

Bulma shows Goku her Dragon Ball Detector.

"It's an iPhone."

Bulma opens her transformer-bike.

"It's Ravage!"

Master Roshi shows up. He starts off as a wise, ominous master. Then inexplicably flips into invigorated-cackling-dirty old man mode.

"That was so fake."

Piccolo straps himself into a dentist's seat and has his blood forcefully extracted through his arms by giant, teeth-like syringes. He shrieks. "MY BLOOOOOODDD!!!!"

"For God's sakes, just take a sample."

Ernie Hudson, in a lame cameo as Master Po-Po, with super fake eyebrows and a beard, does some prayer chanting hand movements with other monks over a table.

"Mah-jong."

An audience member snaps at our riffing.

"SSSSH!"

Thirty points!

Master Roshi teaches Goku how to control his ki to do the Kame-hame-ha. He does a series of interpretative dance moves that look like he's giving his arms a sponge rinsing without a sponge, and fires into a lamp. The candle in the lamp ignites.

"And that's how you do the Hadoken."

Goku is blasted by a phazer gun. He experiences near-death, waking up in a field. The scene is awash in a blue filter.

"Oh man. Goku died and woke up in Twilight."

Before confronting Piccolo, Goku dresses up in his orange costume in a heroic montage.

"That was completely unnecessary!!!"

This is it. The crowining moment of the movie. Goku performs the Kame-hame-ha as Piccolo, in mid-air, unleashes a Genki-dama looking move.

"Kameeeee-"

"This is it guys!"

"-Hameeeeee-"

"Here we go!"

"-HAAAAA!!!!"

Goku rips the Kame-hame-ha. THEN HE FUCKING FLIES TOWARDS PICCOLO WHILE STILL IN THE KAME-HAME-HA FIRING POSITION AND SMASHES RIGHT INTO HIM.

Goku stands triumphantly over Piccolo's unmoving body, his tiny, kiddie-sized orange uniform contrasting with his super huge pajama cargo pants.

"...that was so _bad."

"Awwwwwwwww " (fangirls reacting to James Marster's dead body).

Goku gathers the Dragon Balls to revive Master Roshi. He yells at the sky angrily.

"DRAAAAAGOOOOOON!!!!!!!!"

My friends erupt and spasm into unnncontrollable laughter.

"REVIIIIIVE MASTER ROOOOSHII!!!!"

Roshi is revived.

WAIT! There's a mid-credits sequence! Cliffhanger secret ending!

A lady prepares hot water in a cabin!

"VEGETA!"

The camera tracks her movements down a corridor as she caries a basin of boiling water. The score rises dramatically!

"FREEZA!"

"CELL!"

"Goddamn this is a long extra scene. COME ON!"

The lady sits down next to a figure on a bed, completely covered in sheets! You can't tell who it is!

The lady dabs a cloth in the hot water, and the figure turns its head...

It's frigging Piccolo.

Resume credits.

"...dammit, that was the most pointless extra scene ever."

"Haha! Two minutes long! That scene was two minutes long!"

"I bet the camera man was like, 'Hahaha, I'm gonna draw this out as long as possible, I'm gonna make that fucking audience wait so hard for this scene, hahahaha! They'll think it'll be something cool, and then it'll be the most useless extra scene they'll ever see!' This is gonna be so good!"

And the riffing goes on even beyond the cinema. We gather outside a shake stand near the mall exit and tear into the movie over and over...

"Dammit, I'm giving this five out of five stars on my Multiply blog just to piss people off."

"Geez, if I were the dragon, I'd frigging kick Goku for yelling at me like that! Such an ass! 'Shut up! Okay! Just gather the balls, and I'll show up! That's it! No yelling or hand movements!'"

"Did you hear that lady shush us??"

"Yeah, what was her problem. It wasn't like the movie was even taking itself seriously at that point anyway."

"Well... she had a kid."

"...oh. A kid."

"They were a lesbian couple, weren't they?"

"Huh?"

"Those ladies, cuddling in front of us?... they were lesbians. And they had the kid with them. I saw the lady in front of me kiss her kid."

"Well, I would've said, hey kid? Your moms? They're gay."

We go to our friend's house and watched some fan-made trailers of Dragon Ball. French fan-made trailers.

"Now THAT'S how you do Dragon Ball!"

"See? Only four minutes long but it's still better than Dragon Ball."

We open the Ryan versus Dorkman 2 clip.

"See? So far they're only walking, but still better than Dragon Ball."

And so on, and so on...

So friends. If you're going to watch Dragonball, watch it with friends. Watch it with geek friends. Open-minded geek friends. It will be one of the best bonding experiences you'll ever get!

PostScript: The Hannah Montana trailer played before the movie. My friend looks to us, with a knowing look, and says, "Okay guys. Right now. Let's make a plan for this right NOW!"