Cast: Ray Winstone, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn, John Malkovich.
Directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary.
Story: Scandinavian hero kills monsters.
If Beowulf were a cartoon, it'd be a whole lot easier to recommend. As it is, I'm struggling.
The problem is its own unique selling point: the motion-capture animation. Whilst this is superb for demons and other fanciful creatures, it's hopeless at human faces. Like The Polar Express before it, every human looks detached and zombified, as if the eyes are drawn on their closed eyelids. This is a huge drawback, as it whacks you in the face every time the camera closes in on someone - which is a lot. The camera also does some rather peculiar movements, such as focussing on the wobbly tip of a nasty looking pikestaff while looking down its length. Why would they do that, I thought as it distracted me from the dialogue. Are they showing us how they can focus all the way from tip to wielder, unhampered by those pesky physical limitations most directors have to deal with? Well no, as it turns out. The reason we had a pike shoved up our noses is because the movie's supposed to be shown in 3D, with one of those funny sets of glasses. Now I didn't know that, and if I had I'm not sure I would've been so comfortable shelling out for a boggo 2D ticket when the full experience requires a whole extra D.
The final issue I have also applies to many more traditional animations, and that regards the gravity. Whenever anything runs or jumps, the movement looks wrong because the flying part returns to the ground too soon, as if they've programmed the force of gravity too high in their physics model. I've been banging on about this for a number of years now and it's not getting any better, quite the opposite in fact.
Now before I let you back to your heroic lives I shall make one somewhat ironic observation. During the usual desperate half hour of ads that infect our consciousness before we're allowed to watch the movie, we're piously reminded that we only get the full movie experience in a cinema rather than downloading a hooky copy from cyberspace. Apart from the obvious point that we've clearly already queued up and bought the ticket, apart from the fact that hooky web copies don't have half an hour of brain-numbing commercials to endure, apart from the fact that we're NOT getting the full movie experience because our crappy local cinema doesn't do 3D, apart from the fact that I can have a banquet at home for the price of a cinema peanut, apart from the fact that my living room doesn't have four failed medical experiments behind me making "hilarious" comments during the movie, apart from all that .... (breathe) .... this particular movie would be BETTER in slightly lower quality because the dead-eye problem would be drastically reduced. Remind me again why I paid seven quid and drove twenty miles for this...?
Beowulf is an interesting diversion but not that great a movie. As it's all about the aesthetics, it rather defeats the object viewing it in dull old flat-screen, so catch it in 3D if you can. Or download it.
Testosterone Satisfaction Rating: 4/5 - Angelina Jolie naked in shiny CGI and sporting a tail is still enough to make you glad you're not watching with your parents. Ray Winstone flashes his pretend arse around a few times, however his tackle is hidden Austin Powers style, which is just as well for its rating here. The fast paced fight scenes boost its score too.
To enjoy this film you should: find somewhere to see it in 3D.
Beowulf was released in the UK on 16th November 2007.