message in the movies By Rev. Bruce Batchelor Glader

    
Beowulf      Rated PG-13
Directed by Robert Zemeckis.  Starring Ray Winstone and
Anthony Hopkins.  

Photos © Paramount Pictures
I really wanted to list this movie as an “animated feature”, which I usually do for movies that are mostly composed of non-human elements, but the producers of Beowulf would rather speak of the film’s “motion capture” technique as a way to fully engage a troupe of actors to guide the movements of the computer-generated figures on the screen.  Whatever.  It’s still a “cartoon movie” to me, using the same kind of tricks that were in Zemeckis’ 2004 The Polar Express.  The human figures still move around rather stiffly with faces out of a wax museum.  The overall design of this Old English tale is impressive, and the dragon that shows up in the last chapter is pretty cool.  And, it’s in 3-D, too! Some of the language of the epic poem is retained, but the overall impact is fairly underwhelming.  The monster Grendel is rendered as a somewhat goofy and grotesque goblin, and his mother (not really a big presence in the poem) is presented as a sexy temptress with a wicked hairdo.  There are plenty of spears being plunged at the audience, other 3-D effects and fights, Beowulf himself fighting in the nude (with his private parts conveniently blocked from view), flights from monsters and other fancies.  All in all, Beowulf is one of those movies that is best described as “quite a ride”, which is not necessarily a recommendation.  However, I am looking forward to the inevitable theme park ride of Beowulf which will get me through this storyline in three minutes.  The poem, they say, is actually quite good.

Pitchfork Rating: Two halos.  (Reasonably entertaining comic book simplifications of the first major work of world literature; don’t trust this for your book report, though!)  One pitchfork. (For a lot of adolescent non-sexual nudity and a lot of non-explicit violence, all that the PG-13 rating will allow.)

                       
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