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The realm of viking king Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) is threatened by a
monster called Grendel (Crispin Glover) - a demon who is of course the
spawn of a union of Hrothgar and Grendel's sorceress mother (Angelina
Jolie). So Hrothgar promises the hero who rids the kingdom of Grendel half
of his land and possessions. Enter Beowulf (Ray Winstone), mighty warrior,
who ... immediately lays his eyes on Wealthow (Robin Wright-Penn),
Hrothgar's wife - but then he completely undresses (to give the demon, who
also wears no cloths, a fair fighting chance) ... and kills Grendel - but
is quite surprised to hear the monster speaking (anachronistically, the
monster speaks Anglo-Saxon or Old English, while all other characters
speak current or New English - but nobody seems to have any trouble
understanding Grendel). After the monster is dead, all of Beowulf's
entourage are killed by Grendel's mother, who invites him to come visit
her. And so Beowulf does, bringing the fabled Golden Horn as a gift
(?). But since Grendel's mother is Angelina Jolie and is pretty much
naked, Beowulf doesn't fight but fuck her (and can you blame him ?). And
in return, Grendel's mum promises to leave Hrothgar's kingdom in peace as
long as the Golden Horn remains with her ... Hrothgar listens to
Beowulf's big tales about Beowulf's victory over Grendel's old hag-mother
- and doesn't believe a word (remember, Hrothgar fucked her as well, all
those years back). But all of this isn't his problem any longer, he just
promises the realm (all of it) and Wealthow to Beowulf and throws himself
off the next cliff. Fast forward a few decades: Beowulf has been a
successful but cruel king, conquering the neighbouring kingdoms in a
series of cruel attacks and neglecting his wife Healthow in favour of
young Ursula (Alison Lohman) he has developed a soft spot for. Then
Unferth (John Malkovich), who has always been Beowulf's chef adversary
back in the days when Hrothgar was still king, returns the Golden Horn to
the realm - which of course means that Grendel's mum's new son (with
Beowulf), a dragon, attacks almost immediately, laying most of Beowulf's
realm to ruins and killing many of his subjects. Luckily though Beowulf
knows about the dragon's achilles heel, jumps upon the dragon in
mid-flight, and kills it after a long battle - even if it costs his own
life. With Beowulf gone, the kingdom falls to Wiglaf (Brendan Gleeson),
the only man he really trusted, and Wiglaf is clever enough to just return
the Golden Horn to Grendel's mum and not fuck her, so she won't have
another offspring ...
Oh boy, what a piece of trash ! Director/producer
Robert Zemeckis might have had the good sense to hand scripting duties to
Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman, two men not exactly Hollywood mainstream
(yet), but it goes (way) downhill from there: The main flaw is that the
whole film was, for no apparent reason, computer animated - even though
apart from the monsters and the occasional special effect scene the whole
film is done in a photorealist way. And that's the big downlet of CGI:
Despite the best efforts, computer-animation just fails to look realistic,
hair are a frequent problem, as are gestures and facial expression, plus
for some reason in this movie, the CGI-characters all seem to never move
their fingers and hands, just like Barbie-dolls, which looks odd to say
the least. But the film is also flawed apart from the obvious letdowns
of computer animation. Thing is, Zemeckis, not exactly an intellectual
among the mainstream filmakers, never seems to get a handle on the more
sublte aspects of the screenplay, like Beowulf's lusting for king
Hrothgar's wife or his moral decay once he has become king, insisting to
tell it as a simple/simplistic heroic tale, and as director, he does
nothing to inject his reactionary storytelling with innovative ideas,
instead invariably going for the obvious. So yeah, this film is bad,
very bad, and not bad in a good way, but at least, like many truly bad
films, it at least has some scenes of unintentional humour: There is naked
Angelina Jolie in anachronistic high heels (according to reports, Jolie
had no idea just how revealing her role would be, so maybe this is the
reason for CGI), there is Grendel talking Anglo-Saxon with all characters
understanding him but talking English, and the best scene, Beowulf's
lengthy naked battle with Grendel, during which the director walks an extra
mile in not showing his little president, using all sorts of tricks
reminiscent of nudist camp movies of old - this scene alone is nothing
short of a laugh riot, so maybe, just maybe, Beowulf has at least
one redeeming merit after all.
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