A decent adaptation, dragged down by Zemeckis' choices.

Rating: 7/10 (7 December 2007)

"Beowulf" is the classic work of Old English literature, but, truth be told, it really isn't much of a story, when viewed in a modern sense; Beowulf fights Grendel, Grendel's mother, and a dragon, winning in each case simply because he can, dying in the final combat, which is completely disconnected from the previous two parts. Tolkien forgive me, but that is my view of the story. Here, Gaiman and Avary solve the structural problem of the disconnect between the first two acts and the third; at the same time the story changes rather dramatically, and is no longer a straightforward heroic tale, but a story about a flawed hero perpetrating a lie and having to face the consequences. Devotees of the classic will take issue with this, but I don't. I find this story a lot more interesting.
The major problem with this film is the way Robert Zemeckis chooses to film it. Zemeckis has always been very interested in pushing technical achievement in his film; "Forrest Gump", for example made virtuoso use of editing and CGI to insert Tom Hanks into 40 years of American TV footage. However, in the last little while, his new project as become creating totally photo-real CGI, and he's lost the human element in the process. I am not saying that CGI cannot be used for human characters; Pixar has done so quite successfully; but attempts to completely replicate real actors simply have not worked yet, and, as detailed by the "Uncanny Valley" effect, the closer they look to real, the more apparent the flaws in the technology become. The stylized humans in "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille" were much more fully realized as characters. Zemeckis should either have shot this in live action, or animated it in a more animated fashion where such matters aren't important.
Nevertheless, and interesting production.