Highly amusing, if little else.

Rating: 6/10 (12 December 2007)

Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf is the tale of a man whose hobbies include killing monsters, embellishing stories and shouting his own name (often combining the three). During the course of the movie he fights a huge, rather nasty-looking bloke while completely in the nip, shags his demon mother and then marries what appears to be a transsexual; thus putting his sexuality under serious question. The fact that he looks like a beefed-up David Beckham but speaks like Ray Winstone doesn't help either...
It's in Beowulf's best interests for this review to refrain from venturing into the realms of a serious appraisal. The story, heavily re-jiggered as it is, is feeble to say the least. The voice acting ranges from decent to absolutely atrocious (to give some credit to the actors, though, they hardly have a fantastic script to work with). The animated actors, though highly impressive, still fail to resemble actual human beings consistently enough to convince. In reality, the only things in Beowulf that really work are the two monsters - Grendel and the dragon. The former in particular is fantastically rendered and his loss at the midway point is a major nail in the movie's coffin. Never again does the movie really thrill, although there are a couple of mildly stirring moments near the end.
However, there's something else at work here - something which lifts Beowulf from the "take-it-or-leave-it" doldrums into the heights of "worth a look." Simply this - it's funny. At times, uproariously so. Rather than raising memories of previous action/monster flicks, Beowulf is much more likely to call to mind decidedly comedic predecessors. The titular character's fondness for screaming his own name at times recalls South Park's Timmy (particularly in one hilarious moment involving him bursting from a creature's eyeball). The Malkovich character's penchant for arbitrarily beating his servant is somewhat Pythonesque. There's even a 'hide-the-sausage' sequence to rival Austin Powers.
It's difficult to say how much of this is intentional. It's certainly hard to believe lines like "We swam for five days neck and neck. I was conserving my strength for the final stretch" were ever intended to be taken seriously. Whatever the intention, though, the fact remains - a stirring, thrilling epic it ain't, but a bloody good laugh it most definitely is.