Pretty awful

Rating: 4/10 (29 October 2008)

I realize I am way too old for this type of cartoon movie (I'm 58) and steered clear of it upon its theatrical release, partly due to the dismal reviews. My 30-something nephew insisted I watch it with him on his gigantic HDTV in Blu-Ray format, so i did. For the most part. l was zoned out before it was over. so he pulled it and put in IRON MAN, which eventually had me running for home as that definitely was not Tony Stark up on the big screen. Back to BEOWULF: the story is one of our earliest hero legends, about a warrior who slays a great monster, named Grendel. This cartoon movie loosely follows that story. It is difficult to watch, in a way very similar to POLAR EXPRESS, and was at this moment I should have realized it was a Robert Zemeckis flick. Robert, when will you stop screwing around with the imagery in your movies and just tell a decent story? For an adult, unless that adult is of a juvenile mindset, the film will be virtually unwatchable. It's all motion capture and green screen. I thought the hero should at least have been played by Sean Bean. This Beowulf looks remarkably like Bean but doesn't sound like him, as "it" was actually played by the guy who played Golum. There's plenty of gore and blood, which I always appreciate, but even that was way too cartoonish. For simple minds only.