Reviewed by Screenjabber
Stars Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich,
Robin Wrtight Penn, Brendan Gleeson, Crispin Glover,
Alison Lohman, Angelina Jolie
Written by Neil Gaiman & Roger Avary
UK certification 12 | UK RRP £22.99
DVD Region 2 | Runtime 109 minutes
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Beowulf is here once again to kill our mawnstaah (thanks, Ray). But if you saw it at the cinema in 3D, as we did, you'll notice something missing when you watch it on DVD ... it just seems a lot flatter and less colourful. And those 3D tricks are just bloody annoying.
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 though, 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. It’s a huge tale of heroics and flaws, and Zemeckis’s film pretty much matches it in terms of scale and ambition. But it’s not quite as good as it could have been. Epic drama needs to grab the heart as well as thrill the senses and in this department Beowulf falls short. As with Zemeckis's earlier computer-generated 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 are watching a computer game rather than playing one. As well as that, the CGI humans are still not quite right in terms of movement. 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 (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.
And what is it with the completely pointless nude scene, where Beowulf decides to drop his pants and fight Grendel naked — for reasons of fairness, apparently? Has Hollywood been taken over by the gay mafia? First we have the homoerotically charged 300, then the nude Turkish bath fight scene in Eastern Promises, and now this. Luckily, Beowulf 's dangly bits are continually blocked, a la Austin Powers (and, more recently, Bart Simpson) by hilariously convenient objects. However, despite the above Beowulf is an immensly enjoyable experience. The scope is enormous and it’s not often that such classics get to a wider audience. It is, unfortunately, just so much better on the big screen. And in 3D.
EXTRAS *** No commentary from the director or cast, sadly. But there's a bunch of decent featurettes to make up for it: A Hero's Journey, The Making of Beowulf; Mapping the Journey; The Designs of Beowulf; Beasts of Burden, Designing the Creatures of Beowulf; The Art of Beowulf; and Creating the Ultimate Beowulf. And there are a few deleted scenes, which are in a very early stage of the animation process. But the most fascinating of the lot is the making of, which takes us onto the set — all wire frames and matrices — during the motion-capture process. it's very weird seeing all these well-known actors wearing lurid wetsuits with multicoloured dots all over them (yes, even their faces; and yes, even the horses got the dot-marker treatment). But it's utterly intriguing when you compare it to the finished film. Disappointingly, none of the behind-the-scenes stuff goes into the 3D process. And even more heartbreaking: there's no footage of Angelina Jolie on stage in her dot-matrix skintight wetsuit.
• Reviewed by Ian McCreath, Neil Davey & Stuart O'Connor