Entertaining...nothing more.

Rating: 6/10 (16 November 2007)

We've all heard about the stunning visual stimuli: the motion-capture effects used in Zemeckis' 2004 adaptation of the child book favorite, The Polar Express; we've, too, heard and seen plenty of Angelina Jolie's sensual portrayal of the hunted monster's mother; and we've all certainlyor at least hopefullyheard of the tale itself: the sweeping, grand Old English epic of Beowulf, the demon slayer who tore through foes like he ripped through Grendel, ever-slowly luring him towards a fateful end. However, what you might not know is that the praised visuals in Beowulf are no more impressive than that of a next-generation video game console, that Angelina Jolie's screen-time is minimal (lesser even than in the text from which the screenplay was adapted), and that, though Gaiman and Avery's adaptation is fair for a 3D-intended blockbuster spectacle, it lacks what made the historic poem so true: the sullenness of the main character, who hid behind a façade of heroism and prestige, only to be poisoned by his own secrecy and hollowness, and the knowledge that his glory came birthed from the lies he'd told. Don't get me wrong, Beowulf is entertainingpretty darn entertaining, in factand contains enough blood and eroticism to gratify a young boy's lust for such things, but its aspirations seem to end there. What could have been a condensed LOTR-esquire experience falls far short of anything close, and ends up where our supposed hero did, lost between what it tries to be and what it actually is.