“Beowulf” stars Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Robert Wright Penn, Brendan Gleeson, Crispin Glover, Alison Lohman, and Angelina Jolie. The film takes place in a village that is being disrupted by a beast. This is an adventure/fantasy that will be marveled only by it’s new age of animation.
“Beowulf” starts off with the village having a loud party that agitates the town beast, who has sensitive ears and goes by the name Grendal (Crispin Glover). The king (Anthony Hopkins) is tired of the destruction that Grendal has caused the town and calls upon the hero Beowulf (Ray Winstone). Beowulf then agrees to slay the beast. After his encounter with Grendal ends with Grendal missing an arm, Beowulf is unaware that the beast has an angry mother (Angelina Jolie) that he must face after slaying Grendal.
“Beowulf” puts the stunning animation that was used for “The Polar Express” to bloody good use. The problem with Beowulf is the remarkably bad dialog that produces a few unintentional (?) laughs. It was hard to tell if Robert Zemeckis was trying to make the film satirical on purpose. The only way to see this film is in theaters because the animation wouldn’t look as good on DVD. Strikingly entertaining as far as visuals go.
Another major problem with “Beowulf” is the ending, which I call a momentum stealer. It may have a connection with the story, but with such a slow paced ending to such a briskly paced film makes for a disappointing conclusion. As far as animation goes, this is the best I have seen all year. This is a huge leap from the poorly written and badly executed “Polar Express”, but still has it’s flaws that linger.
“Beowulf” is a visually captivating movie experience. There are two things that I couldn’t help but linger on. One is the laughably bad dialog, and the other is the ending takes away from the film’s energy. I will have to say that this film has one thing worth recommending, it’s thrillingly beautiful animation, and therefore fails as a whole.
Descent review. A little repetitive in points. Good choice of words – it gets boring seeing reviewers who try to out shine themselves with ‘sublime’ like words. Outside a little repetitive – which I see your caliper of writing is easily capable of remedying – this is good.
I agree for the most part. I saw the movie in 3D, and I’ve never seen a 3D flick before. So I LOVED it for that… 3D rules! The scenes were so much more enjoyable and I felt so much physically closer to the story as an observer.
Well, considering that Beowulf is the earliest known work of English Literature, I think the movie version of the tale was not good enough. ‘Beowulf’ the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, was 3183 lines in length. That is LONG! So I do agree that the movie was quick paced considering all that happened. And the ending was disappointing in comparison. Angelina was passé IMO. She barely even appeared, and when she did, she just stood there and looked good. The male lead wasn’t particularly impressive either, but also did a great job looking hunky ;)
I really really enjoyed the Grendal scenes. He was very creatively done and in 3D, he was repulsive, which considering his role, means he was fabulous. I also really enjoyed the dragon scene in the end. The flying around was great in 3D.