an unlikely epic blockbuster done in CGI meant for 3D; it's brutal and fun

Rating: 7/10 (22 November 2007)

Robert Zemeckis and his Imagemovers team and CGI people and 'motion-capture' folks have turned out another following the Polar Express in 2004: once again the technique of a fully realized animated feature wrapped around real-actors performing only animated over. It's a little like a mix-and-match method of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, only this time with Toontown completely bleeding over LA. Speaking of bleeding over, Beowulf is not the kind of movie that will work well for the wee kiddies, the ones who maybe just have gotten a taste of Lord of the Rings; despite the PG-13, had it been animated by someone else like Ralph Bakshi, it would definitely get an R. While not on the same level of relentless video-game violence of 300, Beowulf does contend to bring in a similar contingent of an audience, while also likely alienating many who might have loved the original epic poem in the murky middle-English text. Transformed into a tale of a flawed monster killer who keeps on reminding us over and over "I-AM-BEOWULF!" as he ascends into a position of total power as a living legend, Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman leave it more as a director's film, making little moments of nuance and strength in the epic action-movie sort of way.
To be fair, Beowulf isn't very complex, which is just as well for many of the people who will go see it. There's also not much intended humor either, albeit somewhere in the similar ballpark of unintended laughs as 300 (if, perhaps, with a slightly better filmmaker at the helm). Story: Beowulf (Winstone, who's voice is about as commanding as imaginable) is called by a Danish king (Hopkins) to slay Grendel, a man-monster living in a mountain, who comes down to demolish all the people in his path based on noise vibrations that tick him off. He does slay the beast, and when Grendel's mother finds out, she goes also on a rampage of some slaughter. When Beowulf goes to confront her, he knocks her up (and why not when it's portrayed by a consistently nude Angelina Jolie), and she bears a son (not quite) unbeknownst to him. Then his son is born as a dragon, who also as Beowulf is an old king ravages the town. Take 3!
Inbetween this there isn't much else story, save for a tiff between Beowulf and Malkovich's character, and some allusions to adultery in the King's marriage to the Queen (color us shocked). The reason to watch the film isn't for it's poetry in language, anyway, but for the rip-roaring sensationalism of the piece visually, as a kind of pop-art throwback to both folklore and video-games of the present. Luckily, Zemeckis has gotten rid of the "dead-eyes" syndrome that plagued the Polar Express. It doesn't mean from time to time the characters come off a little wooden, even if it is behind layers and layers of silicon detail. What works best is seeing Zemeckis and his technical team make it as something of a marvel: when watching the shot where it pulls back all the way through the village, through the woods, and to the mountain and cave where Grendel groans in agony, the shot and the audio of the dissipating banging and singing in the King's hall makes as much of a stand-out as anything in Zemeckis's arsenal.
Add to this the imagination in the fantasy elements: Grendel is one of the great creations in the realm of computer animation, right up there with Gollum and the new-and-improved Yoda; he's an abomination, with no skin and lots of deformities all very close up in 3-D, but there's a very real human quality to him too, tortured and retarded, led on by the (as a contrast) slick, golden, and attractive mother. Then back to the dragon in the climax, who is a combination of all three, and even if somehow the dragon doesn't quite work as well as Grendel, it comes close. As a piece of drama, it leans towards the silly and pompous, including a five-minute fight sequence where the animators avoid an R with the dreaded shot of Beowulf's crotch. As a piece of skillfully controlled work of eye-popping maneuvering, it almost completely makes up for the flaws in the material. It's a must-see in the sense that you should see it on a big screen, with the glasses, and as close as possible. How it is with flesh and blood characters is just so-so.