Alternately goofy and gorgeous, Beowulf‘s the
cinematic adaptation of the roughly 1200-year-old poem that everyone
had to read in high school. But be wary, English majors: Hardly the
Beowulf that’s in your Norton anthologies, director Robert
Zemeckis’ vision of the Old English epic is mostly notable for two
things: (A) It’s all CG, and (B), it features a naked Angelina
Jolie.
Well, she’s sort of naked, and she’s sort of Angelina Jolie. Just as
he did with The Polar Express, Zemeckis has used motion capture
to translate the movements of real actors into CG—and just as
with The Polar Express, the results are decidedly mixed, with
Beowulf sometimes looking absolutely killer, and sometimes
looking like Shrek.
Regardless, the story remains as excellent as when you first read it
in your CliffsNotes: Monster hunter Beowulf aims to take down Grendel,
a creature who’s been terrorizing a Danish kingdom. In doing so,
Beowulf pisses off Grendel’s mother, a far more lethal foe. And just
because why the hell not, there’s also a dragon. And some sea
monsters.
Beowulf‘s basically the eighth century’s equivalent of a
superhero comic, and appropriately enough, Zemeckis’ film is at its
best when it’s at its pulpiest, thanks to some fun, outlandish action
sequences. But when it comes to the poem’s inherent drama—or the
drama that’s been liberally added by screenwriters Neil Gaiman and
Roger Avary—things get silly and dull. There are benefits to
Zemeckis’ CG style, but the ability to convey subtle drama isn’t among
them—Beowulf is an ungainly, stilted mess whenever
characters are talking to each other rather than stabbing out sea
monsters’ eyes.
Luckily, there’s lots of eye-stabbin’, and, yes, a disarmingly
lifelike replica of a near-naked Jolie, who plays Grendel’s mom.
Jolie—along with Ray Winstone as Beowulf, Crispin Glover (!) as
Grendel, and Anthony Hopkins as troubled King Hrothgar—makes
things just interesting enough to keep Zemeckis’ tech demo of a film
limping from action sequence to action sequence. Sporadically,
Beowulf is fun, and cool, and pretty; ultimately, it’s an
awkward marriage between Old English and your Xbox.
