I saw Beowulf with friends last night. It blew like "the wind that bark like a bird with breast of foam."
From the brief clips show in the advertisements, it wasn't clear that the movie was entirely computer-generated. It wasn't good computer animation. It looked to me like the Sims had made a movie.
We spent most of the movie lauging at both the dialog and action. It was, frankly, suprising that Beowulf kept his clothes on while fighting the dragon; it seemed to go against his fighting style. I was also interested to learn that the state of the art of computer animation is apparently incapable of rendering the human wang. It was like watching The Cosby Show when Phylicia Rashad was pregnant, but her character wasn't, so the director kept placing objects conveniently in front of her belly. In a display that Beowulf is in fact capable of learning, in a later battle he wore underwear, though in that "battle" he evidently didn't keep them on.
One of the most impressive features of the movie is that in the opening scene, before you've even seen the monster, you're already rooting for Grendel. The Danes in Heorot are being obnoxious. Grendel clearly just wants the frat next door to keep the noise down at their kegger because, you know, he's got to go to work tomorrow. Those sheep aren't going to kill themselves, after all.
As far as I can tell, the only reasons for this movie to receive any positive reviews are if people are still suckers for 3D (I saw it in a normal 2D theater), and the fact that cyber-Angelina Jolie was cyber-naked.
This may have contained spoilers, but I feel absolutely no guilt for not warning you. The spoilers won't ruin the movie any more for you than the movie itself already does. Am I bitter? Perhaps, but the last three movies I've seen in the theater are Beowulf, X-Men 3, and The Hulk. You'd be bitter, too.
3 comments:
*sigh* I had no intention of seeing this, but still, this news bums me out because one of my favorite writers, Neil Gaiman, was involved with the screenplay. I like when reviews contain good-natured humor, though! This was the last movie I saw.
I'd noticed the Gaiman credit, as well. I console myself in that regard by assuming that most of the butchering was done by an uncredited and ironically titled "script doctor."
*sigh* Maybe ... his dialogue can be pretty cheesy, though. I reread Stardust before the movie came out, and I thought it was a little thick with whimsy. I got over it as I read on, though, and by the end, I was well immersed, and the dialogue fit really well. I never did see the movie, though I wanted to.
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