I saw Beowulf on Thanksgiving night and was not overly impressed. I liked the movie and was entertained by it, but I thought it had a major novelty factor that wore thin pretty quickly. My friend agreed. I know several other people who already saw it and their opinion agrees with mine that it was mostly just OK, but nothing great.

This movie is adapted from the classic tale of the mighty hero Beowulf and his exploits against the monster Grendel and its mother. The story is full of action and heroics, but there’s also an underlying theme about leaders who embellish their accomplishments too much and the consequences that can come from that. If a leader comes into power by means of what is mostly a lie, it can create future problems during their rule.

Robert Zemeckis, who has done a variety of movies ranging from the Back to the Future series to Castaway, directed this movie based on a script that was adapted by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary. Zemeckis shot the movie using real actors, then used computer software to digitize the images so that the entire movie plays like a CGI cartoon, but with very lifelike performances for the main players. The whole thing looked like a cutscene from a PS3 game.

Ray Winstone plays the title character in this movie, though he looks nothing like how the character appears on screen. Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, Crispin Glover, and John Malkovich also have supporting roles, and their onscreen counterparts look quite a bit like them. The performances were mostly pretty good, though I noticed most of the male characters, with the exception of Malkovich, yelled way too much.

I had a lot of problems with the look of this movie. For one, there were major inconsistencies with how certain characters looked. One of the most obvious is with Angelina Jolie’s character. In one scene, when she first comes out of the water, it looks just like Jolie, but in other scenes her face looks too airbrushed and the skin texture doesn’t look right at all. I noticed this with other characters in how some details of their appearance would disappear or change at times. It was like the artists or software was skimping over some of the final processing for some of the scenes. I found it all to be very distracting.

If this had been a live action movie, I don’t think it would have gone over quite so well. The dialogue parts might have worked, but the action scenes were all way over the top with people flying through the air and Beowulf performing incredible acrobatic stunts. Another issue with the computer animation overlay is that during these fight sequences, the character movement suddenly stops being so realistic, which also distracts from the movie. At times, I felt like I was watching a cartoon instead of a digitally animated live action production. Oh hell, I guess that still makes it a cartoon. Never mind.

In the end, I was glad that I saw Beowulf in the theaters, but I won’t bother to watch it again on DVD. There is a video game released to accompany the movie, and it does actually look pretty cool, so I may have to check that out one of these days. My advice to you is wait for the DVD unless you really think you might be impressed by this movie.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older