The film that should have been called "Dennis", or something...

Rating: 9/10 (11 December 2007)

...NOT "Beowulf", because it rogers the very concept of the epic poem Beowulf up the arse. Quite deliberately, too. It's a razor-sharp side-swipe at heroism itself, this tale, and bears a peculiar and quite knowing relation to the source material. It's up there with Starship Troopers. I think a lot of people have missed this.
Essentially this is the story of what the film-makers would like us to imagine is the REAL Beowulf. We're to believe that the real reason we're left with the epic as it is now is because that's just what stories do over time. This is clearly signalled during the film, in particular during the sequence where Beowulf's exploits are performed for him in miniature by the dwarfs. This movie is a calculated, grim-eyed stab at the original's heart. Whether this is a good or bad thing I will leave to others to decide, but make no mistake, the re-write was in no way an *arbitrary* remix of the source material, as some seem to think.
And therein lies the pity. A lot of careful effort's gone into making the story good. As an anti-hero's story, it's really bloody good. Beowulf starts out being a hyper-heroic cock and then becomes a good deal more human as the story progresses. Real, fleshy, palpable, flawed. He screws up. And then he redeems himself! And becomes a much more potent hero figure in the process! A hero whose true struggle, the hardest, most unforgiving one, will never truly be known as the unimaginative, bloodthirsty fools he shares the hall with won't tolerate any of his real feelings. This is much meatier stuff in terms of story-telling than the original. People will be angry with me for saying so, but it's true.
UNFORTUNATELY, this very good story has been tainted with the word "BEOWULF", the title of another story, also a very good story, but *quite different* in terms of theme, and I think this movie would be doing a lot better for itself in the IMDb tables if it was called... ummm... "Simon". Or something.
Cos, it's a very good story, I think.
I ended up liking Beowulf after at first thinking he was really a bit of a thick twit. I liked Grendel's mother from the start and now think she's one of the most interesting characters I've seen on screen this year, maybe in the last five years. Gravitas and guile, oh yes. And Grendel was brilliant, a truly hideous accident, a price paid, a warning, the personification of *dreadful consequence*. And everyone, really, all the actors did brilliantly, the script and acting and plot and effects and mis-en-scene were superb! Also, I really REALLY like the ending. It was a really strong, simple, unexpected ending that sent delightful shivers up my spine, cinematic shivers the like of which I rarely feel these days. Well done, Mr Gaiman! I imagine quite a few people will be cursing you heftily, I personally think you've done rather well... although, after making that strong, clean story, you should just have called it: "Jonathan". Or something. I know you like to be clever, but really, it would have been even better.
3D stuff was good, too! Not in your face at all. Well, apart from the odd tentacle.
Pity about the motion capture, though. Ick. Would have been 10 otherwise.
Oh, yeah, and the stiletto feet were daft. Don't do that again.
But that sequence where Grendel's mother sings over his corpse and starts going nuts... That was MENTAL. Do THAT again.
Nine shiny, watery, fiery, fate-filled stars...