Beowulf (Movie Review)
Well, this isn't Beowulf (2007) as I remember the epic poem, but it's closer than the previous film adaptation.
Not to mention, I found Robert Zemeckis' use of performance capture animation suited the storyline, and the devices used to fill in narrative gaps (e.g. whatever happened to Grendel's father) were as believable and well-supported as any doctoral dissertation.
That said, Beowulf was a bit bloodier than necessary, overacted, and the airbrushing of Angelina Jolie's naked body was gratuitous in a way that seemed designed only to hold the attention of teenage boys otherwise bored with their AP literature course.
For those of you unfamiliar with the story, Beowulf is based on the oldest surviving story to ever be recorded in (Old) English. It is about a kingdom plagued by a monster (Grendel), the hero (Beowulf) who arrives to slay the monster, and the mother who seeks vengeance for the death of her son.
Overall, I found this adaption to be "interesting" and a slight improvement over the previous.
FINAL GRADE: C+
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movie reviews
2 comments:
So what you got for show and tell, Third?
I probably would've given it a "B" but mostly because I was pleasantly surprised at how well it did some of the things I thought it was going to entirely commercialize. In other words, the airbrushing-capture-the-attention-of-teen-boys was far less than I expected...
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