A story of heroic ambiguity

Rating: 6/10 (20 December 2007)

It's hard to push animated movies for the older crowd, Final Fantasy: Spirits Within's abysmal box office performance made producers stray away from these types of productions. Enter Robert Zemeckis, who after Polar Express, takes another shot at this complex genre.
Set in a non-specific a.c. time, the movie tells the tale of one Beowulf, a hero sent to a land where king Hrotgar and his people are plagued by a (really)horrific monster named Grendel who begins attacking the townspeople because he is upset by their loud music and dancing.
For a PG-13 movie, I must say it really stretches that rating with sexual innuendo,nudity, 300 style violence and bestiality.
Visually, it's nice to see, but sometimes the animations are not too perfect, making it look like a video game. Performance-wise, the movie's only two flaws are John Malkovich who uses the same accent from Eragon, a movie which will likely haunt him to this very day and Angelina Jolie's terrible accent. Everybody else does good, though sometimes you'll notice the voices are not entirely matching the action on screen.
Another downside, is that even for a 100 or so minute movie, it feels very slow, some pieces kinda take forever to end, of course when it gets to the action bit it's all good.
The story strikes me as odd, because of how it's more a cyclical tale of moral ambiguity and lust for power, which leads a man to it's ultimate demise, then the heroic, sarcasm-free and perfect hero Beowulf slaying all that dare challenge him, be it monster or a human foe.
This Beowulf character can defeat anyone, but apparently he can't kill Grendel's mother, but her offspring(product of interspecies breeding) can be decimated. I never understood why...