"Beowulf" is an odd little extravaganza of a movie. It is a guilty pleasure, it's blunt about its sexual politics and violent nature, it's also very amusing, but though it might pass as entertainment, I hardly found anything memorable about it. "Beowulf" is the newest film to use the innovative computer animation technology, which is what director Robert Zemeckis used before with his "Polar Express", and also with last years "Monster House" which he produced. For the most part, I like this technology but to a point. I thought it worked well with a film like "Polar Express" which added to the dark and mysterious elements, but perhaps the numerous action scenes in "Beowulf" hinder the technology a bit which make the film look more like a high tech video game. No doubt this film will interest people who spend their time playing "World of War craft".The story is of course based on the epic poem which since I have not read can only assume follows that plot faithfully. Beowulf comes to a kingdom in order to slay the local monster Grendel. Grendel attacks the people in a merciless manner cutting off their limbs and tearing them apart ( I think it's important to note that had this not been classified as an animated movie, this would no doubt be an R-rated film). But as the story goes on, we find the real monster isn't Grendel, but it's in fact Grendel's mother a dragon who has that canny ability to turn into Angelina Jolie. This is lucky for all the males watching the movie, but bad for Beowulf. Grendel's mother seduces Beowulf with promises of power, wealth, sex with her which he guesses is too hard to pass up, but of course all this could not end well.
"Beowulf" tells us nothing new about men's greedy nature when it comes to power and women, but I guess the story itself is one of the oldest to tell us this so I won't blame the movie. The film is very tongue and cheek and even pokes fun at Beowulf's tendencies to exaggerate his exploits, which had me laughing more than I thought I would in this film. It was good to see a film of this nature not take itself too seriously and decide to have fun. It doesn't try to be smarter than it is and for that it does work as a guilty pleasure. However by the end the action seemed to take too much of a video game approach and I lost what little feeling I had for the characters. I was reminded of the climactic ending of "Transformers" where that just turned into a bunch of CGI robots fighting it out. It's true the new technology is able to do what real life performers can't, but the line was crossed where it interfered with the human element thus losing my interest. If I wanted a role playing video game I'll play "World of War craft", but I don't really want to play that game and maybe that's another reason "Beowulf" didn't work for me.
On a final note, I realize kids today probably are used to seeing R-rated movies anyway but do we have to make it so easy for them by making this film PG-13? This maybe a win less debate but really, this isn't a kid's movie and shouldn't be marketed as one.
2 and a half stars out of 4
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