If Little Miss Sunshine is the best movie of the year, DOA may well be the most fun. And let’s face it, not enough films include fun amongst their merits, so director Corey (The Transporter) Yuen surely deserves credit for putting it at the top of his priority list. There are sacrifices, sure – plot, coherency, pacing, character development, all that stuff – but when something is this stupidly entertaining it takes actual effort to notice the loss.

DOA, for those who don’t know, is a series of fighting games with a long and venerable history, the latest (DOA 4) being amongst the flagship titles for the X-Box 360. Their various merits over other franchises tend to get overshadowed by their heavy reliance on barely clad female fighters and much-touted accurate breast physics, (which in truth are only realistic if you imagine the battles taking place under low gravity in a wind-tunnel, but there you go) – and producers Tecmo recently played up to this with admirable shamelessness by releasing a volleyball spin-off.

As for DOA the movie: well, that’s pretty shameless too, on a number of levels. Firstly, and most obviously, the signature element is firmly intact – the cast are mostly female and rarely come anywhere close to being fully dressed. Secondly, Yuen has no qualms about playing up to the fans, not only with the semi-nudity but also by chucking in recognisable costumes, signature moves, locations and even game-like elements such as names and scorecards flashing across the screen. And finally, there’s the plot, which (putting aside scenes lifted from Hero, House of Flying Daggers and Once Upon a Time in China) is all but identical to that of Bruce Lee classic Enter the Dragon.

So, whether by homage or unoriginality, a disparate group of fighters are drawn to a mysterious island by its owner, Donovan, to partake in the world’s most prestigious and profitable martial arts contest. Among them are professional thief Christie (Holly Valance), pro-wrestler Tina Armstrong (Jaime Pressly) and ninja princess Kasumi (Devon Aoki), each of whom has their own ulterior motive for partaking. They fight a lot, learn the value of teamwork, fight some more, play volleyball, uncover the dark secrets behind the DOA tournament – and everything wraps up nicely with a damn big fight.

But if the premise seems so low-brow that its knuckles drag, the actual execution is pretty smart. The script is frequently laugh-out-loud funny, and balances a number of slim sub-plots well enough to create the illusion of story. The cast are mostly good and the leads are spot on – Valance is wry and charming, Aoki brings a touch of much-needed depth, and Pressly steals the show with some wonderful comic timing, which isn’t so surprising after her run on My Name is Earl.

Of course, all of the above is only there to provide breathers between action sequences, and so it’s a good job that Yuen gets that right too. Given a concept almost doomed to become repetitive, he wisely keeps the fights as interesting and as varied as possible, offering everything from wirework-heavy aerial battling to wushu-style swordplay to wrestling matches to ludicrous explosions. It doesn’t all work, but enough of it does to make it more satisfying that any of the bigger-budget action pictures out this year.

When DOA gets released in America (on the 20th of October) it will no doubt be greeted with the usual flack, and if it’s lucky, grudging complements like “the best computer game adaptation ever” and “fifteen-year old boys will no doubt love it”. And okay, it certainly isn’t for everyone, but then few films are, and even fewer go after their chosen demographic with such rottweiler intensity. This is dumb film making par excellence, a breathless, deeply silly, immensely entertaining celebration of the simple joys of watching beautiful women kicking ass in their underwear. You probably won’t see another movie this year that inter-cuts a volleyball match with a ninja battle – and if that sounds appealing, odds are you’ll enjoy DOA as much as I did.