Film Bites

Beowulf(Winstone) is a heroic Thane whose reputation as a dragon-slayer and a wooer of women precedes him beyond all bounds. Some of the stories are true, others false, but all agree that Beowulf is a true hero and the only one who can save Heorot from the attacks of Grendel(Glover) and his mother(Jolie). Grendel, born of consummation between King Hrothgar(Hopkins) and an evil temptress is terrorizing his father’s city, enraged by all the merriment which echos through his cave.

Beowulf lures Grendel into the great hall of Heorot to do battle with him, man against beast. Knowing that weapons will not kill Grendel, Beowulf fights him with his wits and brawn. After besting his foe, Beowulf is made king of Heorot in return for freeing Hrothgar from the curse of his illegitimate son.

Enraged at Beowulf, Grendel’s mother kills his army while he sleeps, attempting to lure him into her lair to exact revenge. When Beowulf arrives, she is impressed with his courage and asks him to give her another son for taking hers. She promises him all the wealth and power he could ever desire in return. Consenting, Beowulf returns to Heorot, not knowing that his choice will come back to haunt him.

When a movie is based off of an epic tale, you expect it to be epic itself. There is a certain badassness that you envision in the film adaptation that you imagined while reading the story it was derived from. Sometimes expecting a film to live up to your own hype is a bad idea. This was a perfect example of that. What started as an epic tale of heroism and pride, ended up as a cartoonish farce of machoness and a-list actors.

What film Beowulf lacked in respect to the original story, it more than made up for using ghastly CGI and laughable story jumps. The whole time I was watching the movie I was distracted by the computer generated actors. It all looks like it should be included in the 4th Shrek movie. The only redeeming part of the CG was the battle sequences and the landscape shots. The CGI really worked well for the dragon battle at the end of the film, other than that, the characters seemed cartoonish and distracting. Beowulf is simply a mediocre movie based off an amazing story which was tarnished by a creative director with too much zeal for wanting to be different. Epic films are supposed to look real, fairy tales are supposed to look fake. Keep those two genres separate because that’s when they work the best.