It's a cinematic marvel!

Rating: 9/10 (17 November 2007)

I hadn't heard anything about it at all until the other day, when Angelina Jolie and Anthony Hopkins swooped in for the premiere. So I kinda knew it was computer-generated using virtual motion capture for the acting - which I had a bad feeling about because I really hated The Polar Express.
But I needn't have worried. The actors looked like the actors - hell, forget computer graphics. That *was* Angelina Jolie rising out of the water, as sexy as ever. Even if she did have a scaly tail and impossibly beautiful (if spherical) breasts covered in mud. The sooner cinema gets to the point when you can take home your own computer-generated 3D model of your favourite character as you leave the auditorium, the better. Seriously, the friend I took with me had no idea the acting was computer-animated. She knew something was slightly off, but she assumed it was a side-effect from the blurriness of the 3D IMAX format.
Over here, it seems to have been given a 12A rating. Which is so wrong. The first minute lulls you into a false sense of comfortableness, before it's all blown apart in five harrowing minutes of gore, up close in CGI.
Once I got home, of course I had to look it up on Wikipedia. And while a lot of it did seem to have the Hollywood treatment, I was surprised at how much of it had been "changed" from the original story. Then again, the original tale has probably been augmented a lot (to say the least) over the years...