Not All Poetry Translates to Greatness

Rating: 5/10 (21 January 2008)

When I first heard that a movie version of the old English epic poem Beowulf was being made, and that its screenplay was going to be by the same author of Stardust, I immediately knew that I wanted to see it. In research I found that the movie was going to be made using a progressing style of filming called motion capture (used previously in the family Christmas movie The Polar Express) in which movements of actors are digitally recorded and then animated over, it seemed like it might be a good idea, and the fact that the movie was being put through all sorts of editing to keep it PG-13 made me believe that perhaps this wouldn't be just another "fit-as-much-blood-into-this-as-possible" type of action film.
Although I have to admit that the movie was entertaining and the special effects beyond belief, overall the film was disappointing. Improved as the motion capture effect was, the humans' movements were floppy and almost comical, I was reminded forcefully of the Shrek movies where the humans have overly-thick sausage fingers and sharp, unnatural movements. The only relief from these human images was close-ups of the characters faces where the detail was so rich it was almost impossible to tell if the image was real or computer generated. Real human actors would have done much better.
Another setback which utterly destroyed what would have otherwise been a successfully entertaining first half was the fact that the monster Grendel, which was the main reason for Beowulf's heroics, was laughable. Given a human voice (and a whiny one at that), Grendel pitifully screams his way through the first fight in which he demolished half the population of the village he's attacking. Rather than grimacing at the fact that he tears a person in half at one point, the audience laughed at how bad his presence was. Even I found him annoying.
And the rating? The most shocking part of the film was the fact that it was rated PG-13. So full of violence was this movie that a family in the theater with me left before the end of the film. As I said before, a person is ripped in half right before our eyes, twenty-something people are hung from the ceiling with their skin torn off and blood dripping down their bodies. What were they thinking when they gave the rating? I don't suggest this movie for younger brothers or sisters.
Disappointing though it was, the movie, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, and Crispin Glover, wasn't a total loss and was actually pretty decent when you got past all its flawsand bad first half. The only justification for going to see it in theaters is to fully appreciate the beauty with which the backgrounds and other scenery were made.