The 3-D animation is all this has going for it

Rating: 5/10 (24 November 2007)

Powerful Beowulf journeys to a village to destroy a monster named Grendel. Unfortunately he doesn't realize Grendel has a mother to deal with too.
OK--the 3-D animation is incredible. The characters look and act like real people. The voices match the characters perfectly also. Also, despite the PG-13 rating, this has plenty of nudity--mostly male. Beowulf has a long battle with Grendel--and he's completely nude during it! Still there are no frontal shots and you're always aware that you're looking at a computer-animated figure. Also the female nudity is pretty minor--you see breasts but no nipples. There's also some pretty extreme gore but it all comes across as fairly unrealistic. If this had been done live action it probably would have gotten an R. But, that aside, this is pretty routine and boring.
The story has been read by probably every kid in U.S. so you know exactly what's going to happen. Also they speak in Old English and it gets tiresome. Some of the speech is unintelligible--I couldn't understand half of Grendel's lines and Angelina Jolie (playing his mom) puts on a very strange accent. Also there's an ending that (surprise surprise) actually leaves room for a sequel! However I've never liked fantasy movies (except for the Lord of the Rings trilogy) so maybe it's no surprise that I was bored by this and looking at my watch far too much. But, again, the 3-D animation was superb and doesn't leave you with the blinding headaches that the old 3-D did. So--use your own judgment on how much you like fantasy for this.