Reviewed by Ian McCreath
Stars Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich,
Robin Wrtight Penn, Brendan Gleeson, Crispin Glover,
Alison Lohman, Angelina Jolie
Written by Neil Gaiman & Roger Avary
Certification UK 12A | US PG-13
Runtime 101 minutes
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
When I was a child, 3D meant spending two woeful hours in the company of a fake plastic shark in Jaws 3D. Not so in 2007. With Beowulf you get full-on blood, guts and gore galore, breathtaking in your face action and Angelina Jolie wearing nothing but a pout. That's progress for you.
Taking the oldest epic poem in the English language as the starting point for this groundbreaking state-of-the-art action romp, Zemeckis has come up with a movie that is brilliant, bawdy fun. A village plagued by the rampaging demon Grendel is saved by a mighty warrior Beowulf (Winstone). Celebrations are short lived as Grendel’s ruthlessly seductive mother (Jolie) unleashes a hidden curse on Beowulf which only he can ultimately overcome. Beowulf won't win any prizes for subtlety, with a script crude enough to make Sid James blush, but it’s all the better for not taking itself too seriously. This film is all about the spectacle and for that reason alone you'd be best catching it on the biggest screen you can find and most definitely in one of the handful of cinemas equipped to show it in 3D. It just won’t be the same on Screen 2 at Barnet Odeon.
If at times the 3D verges on the gimmicky (and is confusing when someone gets up to find the toilet) the effect is truly astounding, thrusting you directly into the action like never before. The final dragon bashing action sequence has to be seen to be believed and leaves you praying Peter Jackson is watching and is inspired to make The Hobbit in full-on IMAX 3D glory. Though an experience like no other, Beowulf is not without its problems. Epic drama needs to grab the heart as well as thrill the senses and in this department Beowulf falls short. As with Zemeckis' earlier effort The Polar Express, the problem lies with the emptiness of the eyes. Though telling a tale of great passion, the pixellated heroes betray about as much authentic soul as an X-Factor final, leaving you at times wondering why you have come to a cinema to watch a computer game. But then everything around you bursts into flame, you're whisked up into the air on the back of a kick-ass dragon and Angelina is back on screen. Suddenly you don't seem to mind too much.
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SECOND OPINION | Neil Davey *** Gor blimey, if it ain’t me ol’ mucker Beowulf. Alright Wolfie? That might seem a bizarre introduction to a review of the latest state-of-the-art cartoon from Zemeckis but it’s probably not as bizarre as either the casting of Ray Winstone as the titular ancient hero of legend or the fact that his CGI-likeness has been to the gym rather more often than Ray himself. Students of classic literature should already know the tale but for those who don’t, Beowulf is the rather macho hero who steps in to stop the beast Grendel, proves his humanity by allowing himself to be seduced by the beast’s demon mother (Jolie) and thus sets the wheels in motion for his own downfall.
It’s a huge tale of heroics and flaws, and Zemeckis’ film pretty much matches it in terms of scale and ambition. This is particularly true if you see it in 3D at an IMAX screen, where your eyes will continually threaten to explode at the spectacle before you. But it’s not quite as good as it could have been. The CGI humans are still not quite right in terms of movement and there’s a strange ‘dead’ quality to their eyes. The major set-pieces — the battle with Grendel, a race at sea, the climactic man v dragon bout — are astonishing, but the use of the casts’ real faces is slightly alarming whether untouched — eg, Anthony Hopkins giving it his drunken all as King Hrothgar — partially amended — Jolie’s inbuilt high heels, scales and tail — or completely redesigned, a la Winstone’s buff titular hero. Worse than that though is a tendency to go all too predictable. The budget and scale here could have made Beowulf The Jazz Singer of CGI or the Jurassic Park of cartoons. Instead, it does the ‘classic’ 3D thing of waving pointy objects out of the screen. At every bloody opportunity.
There’s also a completely pointless nude scene, where Beowulf decides to drop his pants and fight Grendel naked — for reasons of fairness, apparently — where the dangly bits are continually blocked, a la Austin Powers (and, more recently, Bart Simpson) by hilariously convenient objects. Still, we should probably be grateful that Beowulf’s wedding tackle is the only pointy object not waved over the audience’s heads. However despite the above and Winstone’s voice making you want to add Eastender-isms to his every line — ‘I am here to kill your monstah ... and then we’ll have a lovely knees-up’ — suspecting that he was good to his muvver, or, indeed, wondering when Robin Wright Penn will urge him to 'leave it Beowulf, he's not worf it' Beowulf is an enjoyable experience. The scope is enormous and it’s not often that such classics get to a wider audience. It could have been trimmed by a good 20 minutes with no obvious loss, but this is genuine event cinema and we’ve not had one of those for a while.