I'd heard nothing good of this film so I wasn't expecting much, but I was taken entirely by surprise to see it was animated. That little detail had escaped my attention.The film is okay, in a D&D style retelling of the story of Beowulf, but there were times when it got a bit too 'Shrek like'. The little animated soldiers being tossed about as if they weighed nothing and the unusual horses put me off a bit and the whole 'Denmark in the Viking ages' with huge stone castles, men in plate armour and ballistae batteries left me wildly unimpressed.
The voice acting was fairly well done, though I'd never in a million years consider Ray Winstone for the part of Beowulf and the animation varied between stiff and flat, to fluid and textured. All in all a half way to decent attempt but certainly nothing worth watching twice.
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I also made the mistake of flummoxing Beowulf with Shakespeare's Macbeth. "Where are the hags?" I asked myself of my favorite characters in the theater. "They've replaced the ugly hags with a buxom Jolie. Goddamn typical Hollywood!"
And I wasn't even drunk. What the hell.
Funny how they made her and Anthony Hopkins's characters look like them, but Beowulf looked nothing like Ray Winstone.
It's not funny if it sells.
It's another comic book adaptaion brought to the big screen. End of the day it's all about entertainment.
Its also an ancient anglo saxon poem... the scope for making something more than just a strange cartoon was ignored. Its a bit like 'Lord of the Rings' where the economic restraints meant the story was Hollywoodized to the point of irrellevence.
The written word just seem to have a longevity that moving pictures simply can't match.
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