A weak attempt at story telling; the film is utterly laughable (in both good and bad ways).

Rating: 3/10 (16 December 2007)

Bob Zemickis' Beowulf tells the story of the legendary warrior who comes to free a Mead Hall of a despicable monster known as Grendel. The final product that is Beowulf is a modern day Monty Python and the Holy Grail. As Beowulf walks around naked, it sets off a chain of movements in the Mead Hall to hide his bits and pieces, from candle sticks to pointy helmets and everything in between.
For those of you who read the book in high school, you'll immediately notice that the narrative has been changed to offer more spectacle than narrative. And that is exactly the point with Motion Capture CGI (MoCap for short). These films aren't supposed to be about the writing or the directing; the film is about spectacle, pure and simple. And in trying to explain MoCap there needs to be an understanding of the oft-misunderstood phenomenon of spectacle versus narrative.
Spectacle can be defined as something that can be seen or viewed, especially something of a remarkable or impressive nature. So we're talking about something that exists for the sake of "showing" the audience something as opposed to the narrative of a film (God forbid the movie actually tries to tell a story, right?) Narrative on the other hand is a narrated account; a story. Simple enough; the narrative can be manipulated depending on the film. Is it a story about people? Is the film a historical event? The point is that narrative is about telling the audience something and taking them through the journey of story telling. Spectacle is more about leaving your brain at home type cinema, whereas a narrative based film is considerable more highbrow. Now Wikipedia tells me that spectacle can be both high brow and low brow; since spectacle on par with Chinese acrobats is something that is difficult to duplicate, and theatre sets a la The Spanish Opera is in a league on its own.
Sadly enough, the last 100 years of American history tells us that spectacle in America leans toward (and usually spills over into) the "freak show" type. The gaudy, trash, and downright repulsive shows traveling America: shows involving dead bodies, public sex acts, and the world's fattest man category. People who take part in these spectacles are usually lesser educated and incapable of understanding the more engaging, involving, and thought provoking cinema; cinema that is becoming scarce today.
Beowulf plays right into the hands of the dim witted spectacle seekers. But oddly enough, there was nothing in the film that was over the top or original in terms of the spectacle. The film was one big excuse to show the audience what it looks like when you animate sex and violence and try to pass it off as cinema. Keep in mind, Angelina was never naked (she's quite overrated to begin with). A million and one nodes attached to your body so the computer knows what you look like, even naked. Even that couldn't save Beowulf.