I’d been looking forward to watching Beowulf ever since the first few trailers began showing up online (you can read the earlier post here if you like).
It just seemed like the sort of movie I’d really enjoy.
With an impressive cast of actors lending their voice talents to the film (Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Robin Wright Penn, to name a few), Robert Zemeckis directing, and a script written by New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman (one of my favorite authors) and Roger Avary (who co-wrote and won an Academy Award for Pulp Fiction), Beowulf seemed to me a sure-thing.
I watched the movie with a friend on opening night, and I have to say I came away slightly disappointed.
The acting was solid, as I had expected. Angelina Jolie’s “accent” was a bit distracting, silly sounding even, and that’s with a semi-nude CG Angelina Jolie slinking around onscreen, but that’s a minor gripe. Crispin Glover is perfect as the voice of Grendel – the creature is truly demented, terrifying when angered, and almost pitiable in defeat. Anthony Hopkins is, as always, very good as the aging King Hrothgar, and Ray Winstone does a mighty fine job as the boisterous, overconfident Beowulf.
In regards to the animation, it was odd at first watching CG characters behaving badly - drinking excessively, cussing, making lewd comments and what not. Audience members, myself included, are accustomed to well-behaved CG humans like the ones found in Shrek and The Incredibles. The effect is unintentionally comedic, especially in the opening minutes of the film, before the viewer has a chance to get properly settled in to the reality of the movie world.
The CG models used in the film are still nowhere near photo-realistic, although I have to say the male characters do come across slightly better than the females. The female characters all seem a bit too mannequin-like, with fare-skin and flawless complexions, whereas the men in the film have more of the minor imperfections – liver spots, stubble, and wrinkles – that add a touch of much-needed realism.
I didn’t watch the film in 3-D, but one suspects that the 3-D experience might be less gimmicky and more palatable when watching animated humans, as opposed to those of the living, breathing variety.
I read a translation of Beowulf over the summer, so I was familiar with the basic plot, the major players, the relationships between them, and so forth. Screenwriters Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary deviate from the source material a great deal, although the changes made are justifiable, as they make for a much more satisfying movie-going experience.
From a story standpoint, the epic poem is little more than a series of loosely connected battles: Beowulf vs. Grendel, Beowulf vs. Grendel’s Mom, Beowulf vs. The Dragon! The screenplay adds a couple of interesting twists here and there, playing with the relationships between characters, all for the sake of story. The result is a bit more convoluted but fits more closely to American movie-going audiences’ expectations as far as character development, pacing, and structure.
My biggest gripe about the movie in general has to do with the movie’s uneven tone. There’s a fairly abrupt shift tonally from the first half of the film to the second half that, to me at least, ruins the overall effect.
The first half of the movie is a lot funnier than you would expect (at times, unintentionally so), especially after watching the 300-esque trailers being used to promote the film. Just as in the source material, Beowulf fights Grendel in the nude, and Zemeckis and company have all sorts of fun finding clever ways to conceal Beowulf’s male member during the sprawling, knockdown fight. Audience members will recall watching similar scenes in the first Austin Powers film and more recently The Simpsons Movie; it’s been done too often for movie-goers to laugh at this tired gag. The people sitting next to me weren’t sure what to make of nude Beowulf’s epic nude battle with Grendel. If the decision had been mine to make, I would’ve had Beowulf challenge Grendel unarmed and unarmored but at least partially clothed.
Later, when Grendel’s mother exacts vengeance upon Beowulf’s comrades-in-arms for the harm inflicted upon Grendel in the aforementioned battle, the gruesome violence and brutality of the act isn’t enough to erase the fact that Beowulf was prancing around in the nude minutes before, and that the battle between Beowulf and Grendel is a bit of a joke and played for laughs.
The final act of Beowulf falls flat, with dramatic moments between characters failing to resonate with viewers who lack sufficient reason to care about the tragic events unfolding before them.
My recommendation – wait until the movie comes out on home video. It’s definitely worth a rental, and while the third act action sequence (Beowulf Vs. The Dragon!) is pretty well staged and a lot of fun on the big screen, watching at home won’t detract from the epic experience.
Tags: Beowulf, Beowulf Movie, Beowulf Movie Review
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