Zemeckis has done it again. In 2003, he gave us the wonderful Christmas classic "The Polar Express" with the vocal talent of Tom Hanks and ground-breaking animation technique. The classic children's story about a magical train that goes to the North Pole and a boy who doesn't believe in Santa Claus came to life from its pages on the big screen. Now he has tackled a far more ambitious project than Santa Claus would ever dare.
Keep in mind this is not your parent's Beowulf. And don't be fooled by the fact that it's animated. King Hrothgar (played flawlessly by Anthony Hopkins) first appears intoxicated and wearing nothing but a bed sheet. He dedicates his new hall to “merrymaking and joy and fornication.” The women, despite the fact that they are computer generated, still are as buxom as they come, and the script is riddled with innuendos.
The story unfolds as a monster known as Grendel wreaks havoc on King Hrothgar, his beautiful young queen, Wealthow (Robin Wright Penn) and his hall of merrymakers. Hrothgar swears half the gold in his kingdom to whoever can kill the man-eating monster. Enter Beowulf, the leader of a Geat army from the south of Sweden. At times it is hard to pay attention to the movie as the war hero (effortlessly played by Ray Winstone)
parades around arrogantly glistening with computer generated sweat and rippling his graphically enhanced muscles. The fact he fights the monster in the buff does not help. “Look at that chest and those abs,” could be heard whispered from the lips of several of the women in the theater.
If Beowulf was the study highlight, his counterpart would be the demon mother of Grendel, voluptuously played by Angelina Jolie wearing nothing at all. As she rose from the murky darkness of her home in a mountainous cave, one wondered how exactly the movie received its PG-13 rating. Questions of costuming choices aside, the computer-generated Jolie plays her part as the seductive demon to perfection.
True, there were a few problems with the film. If you are a devout lover of old English poetry, this Beowulf takes liberty with its source. What Hollywood epic hasn't changed the story? Just look at last years Spartan epic 300. And while the animation is amazing there were flaws. The close up shots made you believe it was live action, but as they got farther and farther away you were reminded it was all computer-generated.
Then there was the fact that the filmmakers make it painfully obvious they are being forced to make the movie PG-13 and not R or the much talked about NC-17 that originally was going to happen. There was so much innuendo that at times you wish they would just get on with it and stop trying to cover up what they really wanted to do with the film.
All critiquing aside, Beowulf is a fantastical feast for the eyes. The score by Alan Silvestri is beautiful and reminiscent of Gregorian chants and requiems. The acting done by Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie to bring their computer counterparts to life is noteworthy as is the epic battle sequence between Beowulf and the dragon towards the end of the movie. Zemeckis' Beowulf may never be shown for a literary class at Cambridge or Yale, but it will retell the classical poem to a whole new generation.
