Beowulf

(2007)
Im partial to this poem, the oldest piece of northern European literature. It has everything its medieval audience would have wanted a stalwart hero, a doomed culture, monsters, fighting, family, kings in trouble, and so on. Beowulf has been around for over a thousand years because its a great poem, but its not necessarily the first piece I would look to translate for a 3D animated film. You know the drill or you would if you hadnt slept through high school English class. Beowulf (Ray Winstone) is the leader of a warband of Geats, a doomed people on the wane, who stops into the mead-hall Heorot to help out besieged king Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins), whose town is being attacked by the terrible monster Grendel (Crispin Glover). Naturally only Beowulf can stand up to the gruesome beast; he tears off its arm and dispatches it, but it turns out the real horror is not Grendel but rather his mother (Angelina Jolie). Beowulf must dispatch her as well, and then the poem jumps to Beowulfs old age, where he must end his life in true heroic fashion by dying in battle against a powerful dragon (a motif of all the great Norse heroes, right up to and including the greatest of them all, Thor). Here Bob Zemeckis and company mess with the story a little bit; Grendel is a misshapen overgrown child who hates humans because their raucous noise disturbs his overly sensitive deformed ear. His mother is hardly a beast but is basically a nude Jolie in heels with a tail (though many of the likenesses to the voice actors are strong here, Jolies is uncanny. Its like youre watching her nude, which is a large part of the appeal, I suppose). And they neatly stitch together the disconnected end of the poem by making the dragon that Beowulf must kill related to the Jolie monster. For an animated film, I was surprised how grotesque and suggestive it was. Not that all animation is for children, but I didnt expect to see so much cleavage and nudity (male and female, including camera angles chosen with care to conceal Beowulfs shlong. Why not just leave his pants on?). The movies pretty coarse and violent, and I know thats the modern view of Norse culture, but its a little off the mark; here the filmmakers revel in the biker-bar coarseness, which turned me off a little. The motion-capture works well enough, though some movements and garments feel a bit rubbery. The likenesses are all pretty good Jolie as I said is fetishistically perfect, as if someone enjoyed their job a little too much and the design work reflects the period well enough. But the 3D was really annoying way too much crap is thrown at the screen and the story, despite the modern tailoring to join it together, never really gels. Theres a whole subplot with Grendels mother and the kings of Heorot that neither goes anywhere nor makes sense, and its a bit of a head-scratcher how a being that looks like Jolie could give birth to something so misshapen as Grendel (or a dragon, but thats another story). Ultimately Beowulf is a bunch of talented and creative boys playing in a very racy adolescent sandbox, reveling in the snot and blood and boobs and implied sex and

nudity. The poem is a violent picture of a doomed race struggling against extinction; the film ignores that for flashy visuals and the implication that sex with hot chicks only gets you into trouble, a sentiment the original audience would hardly have understood, and to be honest, neither do I. Ol Bill said it best: much ado about nothing. November 6, 2011