Truly, truly awful

Rating: 1/10 (28 July 2008)

I love movies about the middle ages, vikings, etc. This was one of the worst I have ever seen, mostly because the dialog was idiotic. It's apity, because the dragon, sea monsters, and Grendel were week drawn and conceived (I did like Grendel's speaking Anglo-Saxon - a nice touch), and the idea that Grendel was Hrothgar's son and the dragon was Beowulf's was intriguing. On flat screen, the CG of the humans is not convincing for the most part. If you want a better movie on this subject, see "Beowulf and Grendel," directed by Sturla Gunnarsson. I do like my movies to be reasonably accurate, and I found enough errors to be irritating, though not more so than the norm for movies about the era. Details like the constant carrying around of roast pigs (the Norse preferred boiled meat), inaccurately-shaped battle axes and the like just tend to rub me the wrong way.