Product: Beowulf (1999)
Rating: 2.0
Beowulf as you've never seen it before
I watched a pretty terrible movie called Beowulf last night. It stars Christopher Lambert, which is a pretty good indication of the movie's level of badness. The movie is a futuristic retelling of the Beowulf story, and it does a half-decent job of it until the end, when it suddenly veers into an erotic horror tale. I really don't remember the Old English version having Grendel's mom as a hot blonde porn star. I also don't remember the epic being boring, filled with clichéed second-scare, bad cuts between scenes, or Beowulf being such a wooden character.The movie had two good things going for it: a great industrial soundtrack (which nonetheless doesn't go with the movie at all), and the way it's made me want to reread Beowulf, if only to clear the bad taste of this movie out of my mental palate. I haven't read it for at least ten years, and it's definitely worth the reread. It also made me remember how I want to learn Old English. I'd love to be able to read the poem in its original language.