If you're going to muck around with history, at least have the nerve to do it with some pizzazz! Put some razzle-dazzle into it, give us some-thing to lean forward in our seats for, some good old fashioned action. Don't just toss in a bunch of out-of-context moments from a literature piece and add some Disneyesque CGI sparkle to it! Unfortunately, director Roger Zemeckis'(Back to the Future trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit) new film Beowulf is short on just about anything good.
And even with the CGI, there's not a bit of pizzazz in sight.
The fascination with the poem "Beowulf", originating from either the 8th or 9th century A.D.(no scholars are completely certain when it was written exactly) has always puzzled me. It's an interesting poem and more than likely is one of the oldest stories dealing with the traditional hero's journey, detailing how the warrior Beowulf confronts and slays the evil creature Grendel that is terrorizing a village, then goes after his mom to boot. I've just never found it particularly enthralling. How-ever, being that it's been studied on high school and college campus-es for the better part of two centuries, I just might be in the minority.
Roger Zemeckis and Paramount Pictures probably didn't think to take my opinions into account either when they chose to waste $150 million on adapting the poem to the silver screen, using the process of motion capture to animate the live actors. So what we have now show-ing in theaters is a movie which clearly demonstrates two things: 1)the excess of Hollywood, wherein a fair sized cast of actors--many of them A-listers like Sir Anthony Hopkins and John Malkovich--are paid goodly sums of money to act on a green screen soundstage and for all intents and purposes simply give line readings. Then more money is expend-ed so that a group of computer geeks can sit around and draw over them, basically turning these professional thesps into cartoon charac-ters. 2)Beowulf provides solid, irrefutable proof as to why CGI crea-tions will never, ever replace flesh-and-blood actors.
What Beowulf the movie wants to be is an animated Lord of the Rings. What it turns out to be, however, is a semi-attractive mess. Sort-of nice to look at, but you don't want to get it all over you. The story begins sometime in the late 5th century with a celebration in the court of King Hrothgar(Hopkins), renowned for slaying a dragon. Hrothgar is married to Wealthow(Robin Wright Penn), a woman several decades his junior, and whom we must assume is a captive bride, due partly to her somber attitude toward her husband(more on this later). The loud Viking revelry disturbs the monster known as Grendel, who lives in a marshland cavern several miles distant. Grendel as depicted here is a deformed half-man, whose eardrums rest on the surface of his body, hence the merest loud noise being torture for him. In his anger, he bursts into the mead hall and slays nearly every last man, but mysteriously leaves the king alone. Over the course of some undisclosed amount of time, several men travel to the marshes to kill Grendel, but all meet with untimely deaths.
One day, a hero known as Beowulf comes ashore with his men in order to aid Hrothgar. Beowulf's father was friends with Hrothgar and so Beowulf is bound by debt to aid him. For Beowulf and Wealthow however, it's love--or lust--at first sight, and the two are not very subtle about it, as at least one of Beowulf's own men, Wiglaf(Brendan Gleeson) takes cautionary note, and Hrothgar himself sees it. But aside from being a hero and self-aggrandizing braggart, Beowulf is also a gentleman after a fashion, and makes no overt play for Weal-thow. Instead, he and his men stay in the mead hall overnight. While Beowulf sleeps naked on the floor(his idea is that since no mortal weapon seems able to harm Grendel, he'll face the monster arm-for-arm on equal terms), his men sing loudly in order to attract the beast. The tactic works well, as Grendel does indeed attack and kills three of the warriors, until Beowulf faces off with him and rips the monster's arm off, leaving him to slink home and die in his mother's(Angelina Jolie) arms. Once Grendel's mom decides to deliver some payback by slaughtering all but one of Beowulf's men, our hero heads off into the marshes to find and slaughter mommy dearest.
Here begins the divergence from both the historical documents and history in general. In the poem, Beowulf does indeed slaughter Gren-del's mother, receives much praise and gifts from Hrothgar, then returns home to eventually become king of his own people. But this is Hollywood we're dealing with, and rather than deal with the complexity required in telling more than one tale--or in treating your intended audience like they might be able to understand said complexities--Zemeckis chooses to dumb it down a bit and throw all the plotlines into a blender. Rather than kill Grendel's never-named mom, Beowulf does her instead(and it is a CGI Angelina Jolie, so it is understandable to a degree) and unwittingly receives a mixed blessing from her: so long as her memory remains in Beowulf's heart and he stays close by, he will become an invincible king. So it is that upon his return to the royal court, Hrothgar intuits what has happened--because the same thing happened to him years earlier, when he did the deed with her and begat Grendel. This is the reason the monster didn't attack Hrothgar... because Grendel was his son(which is not how things are in the poem). This is also a major part of the reason his wife Wealthow is so cold toward him.
Having no heirs(human anyway), Hrothgar names Beowulf his suc-cessor and promptly commits suicide. Beowulf inherits the kingdom and Wealthhow, so it's all good...or so it seems. Years pass and Christianity has begun to take hold over the Vikings under Beowulf's rule(this part of the story takes place in the early 6th century, and Christianity did not actually assimilate these people until nearly a full century later). Following circumstances I won't go into here, Beowulf's land comes under attack from a dragon--which turns out to be the spawn of Beowulf and marsh mom(another serious deviation from the source material).
This movie is nearly two hours long, and thank God(yes, the Chris-tian one--not Odin) that at least the dragon battle takes place! While it's too late to care, at least this last fight is somewhat thrilling. The main problems with Beowulf the film--aside from the excess gluttony of its overblown budget--is that the instant one sees the moderately competent CGI overlay upon what used to be human faces, it immedi-ately creates an emotional distancing for the audience from the events which transpire. One can care if a human being is facing off against some monstrous evil and is in mortal peril--the Lord of the Rings trilogy proved that--but put pixelated skin over flesh-and-blood, and the human element is immediately removed, no matter who is doing the voiceover. One ceases to be concerned with potential bodily injury, and wonders how soon it'll be until the characters clear the next level of the game.
And that is what viewing Beowulf is like...sitting in a darkened thea-ter for nearly two hours, watching what just as easily could be the in-between video shorts of a Playstation game. A couple of times, I had to remind myself that my console was sitting at home, and there was no way I could skip the short and get back to playing. Motion capture, much like the thankfully short-lived rotoscoping of the '70's, doesn't work. It is not enthralling, it does not draw one into the story...it pushes one out of it, sometimes shoving the viewer roughly onto the figurative sidewalk. Not only that, but the story of Beowulf--at least as Zemeckis and co-writers Roger Avary(Silent Hill...figures!) and Neil Gaiman(Stardust, Babylon 5) of all people, present it--is one massive tranquili-zer served up in cinematic form. Seriously, this thing could be project-ed onto the wall of a burn ward of brand new patients, and in spite of their agony, every one would be out like a light in minutes! Two people in my screening audience walked out within the first ten minutes of the movie! And trust me, it did not get better from there until the dragon fight. And honestly...do any of us need to see another dragon fly across the screen for the rest of our lives? If you've seen one, you've seen them all, and whatever mystique such creatures used to have, Beowulf has managed to slay that as well.
The voiceovers are competently done, but given that the actors didn't have much to do anyway, it would be surprising if they weren't. However, in many cases the motion capture looks almost nothing like the actors they represent. In the case of tub o' lard Ray Winstone(The Departed, the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) it's understandable. But Angelina Jolie? Robin Wright Penn? Granted, I've never considered Jolie to be one of planet Earth's Top 3 Most Beautiful Women, but how can CGI possibly make her look bland? And Mrs. Penn has always been one of those women that has a naturally unobtrusive beauty...she never seems to be fully aware of it, and it somehow just sneaks up on the viewer, until they're enthralled by it. Until years pass within the story(another deviation from the poem), the CGI doesn't look anything like her. Unforgivable.
But what's more unforgivable is that someone somewhere approved $150 million to produce this waste of talent and time. Not to mention the atrocious finale song, "A Hero Comes Home" by Tony-winning sing-er Idina Menzel, who performs here like one of the losers on American Idol. If this is the level of "professionalism" with which Mrs. Taye Diggs chooses to allocate to a soundtrack, I have two words: Give. Up. And one more, in case the message isn't clear: Retire. Then, much like this lot of ruined filmstock, your song can be thrown onto the top of the dunghill of bad cinematic memories...and our heroic legends can rest in peace.
Official Archives of LanceReviews...
BOREWULF
English Lit 101 comes to theaters. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.......
Beowulf: a classic of literature turned Looney Toon.
"This storm truly is a fierce thing! Tell the animators to let up a bit!"
"CGI Anthony Hopkins! Have ye any advice for me, 'ere I slay the beast Grendel?"
"Aye! Don't get involved in projects like this!"
"Help me, Beowulf! I'm rendered in no regard to what Robin Wright Penn actually looks like!"
"Uh, lady...? You might want to let your animators know that high heels didn't exist yet in this century!"
"Eh, wha--? It's two a.m., whaddaya want...? What! We're doing the motion capture now? Okay, lemme go put my fake face on."
"In Odin's name, Wiglaf...this is truly a boring movie."
"Aye, Beowulf...aye..."
Wow. A dragon in an Old-World, mythological setting. Never seen one of those before!
"Foolish audience members! Prepare thyselves...for a nap!"
