Failed epic falls short of 300 standard

Rating: 6/10 (8 March 2008)

Beowulf wants badly to be an epic movie, with its heroes and kings, its wondrous vistas, its dragons, and its evil demons, and it certainly is a pretty fair film. It's sort of a combination of 300 and The Polar Express and leans heavily on CGI effects to sell itself. This usually works, but as with Polar Express the facial expressions of the humans look more like a snazzy video game than anything approaching realistic.
Most Americans learned about the tale of Beowulf in high school, about how the young hero slayed the creature Grendel and became a legend. Here, Beowulf's tale is expanded and clarified; what really happened when he strode into that cave to take on the murderous demon? Turns out that Grendel's got a mom, and she's not the forgive-and-forget kind, and before you know it, Beowulf's sliding down a slippery slope of his own device.
Voiced by Ray Winstone, the youthful Beowulf and his band of warriors arrive in Denmark to slay the beast that's been terrorizing the towns. King Hrothgar (Anthony Perkins) has offered half the riches of his kingdom to whomever can lift their curse. Grendel does come, and after slaying some of Beowulf's men (including biting off a head and chewing it), he's finally taken down by Beowulf himself with his bare arms - but that's just the beginning of Beowulf's troubles, as Grendel's mom is a bit unhappy.
The voice characterizations are top notch. It's good to see the gifted Winstone get some work as the hero, because he doesn't really fit the mold of matinÃ©e idol; he's more of a craggy, rough-looking character. But here, he's as smooth as Russell Crowe, thanks to the wonders of CGI. Hopkins is his usual Anthony Hopkins self (sorry, I mean Sir Anthony), lending gravitas that a king should have. Jolie, it should be noted, was a bit unhappy with the resulting CGI for her role, which showed perhaps a bit more skin than the actress had intended to have shown. (Sure, it's not actually her body, but it looks like her, so...) But she's silkily cruel as the water demon out to avenge her son. Offering stout support as always are Brendan Gleeson and John Malkovich, as Beowulf's right-hand man and the king's top commander, respectively. Robin Wright Penn is merely okay in a rather important role as the queen; amazingly, she doesn't look nearly as gorgeous as the real-life Wright Penn does.
But it's the CGI of the humans that I found a little off putting. Rather than looking seamless in a pseudo-comic-book style, as in 300, the people here look a bit creepy, as if they were originally created to appear in some cheesy 3-D porn. I mean some cheesy Flash animation. As with the earliest Pixar films, the animation of humans just doesn't look right; with The Polar Express (directed by Robert Zemeckis, as was Beowulf), the people looked almost creepy and lacked a large range of expressions.
Beowulf is an exciting action movie and contains plenty of intense, well-animated combat scenes, but it falls a little short of being the technical marvel or full-bore sweeping epic that it wants to be.