Beowulf

Other than a tape recording of a reading of Beowulf in Gaelic, a language where all I know how to say is “kiss my ass,” I remembered very little about the fable of the great Danish hero who defeated Grendel. Upon watching this CGI film, I clearly didn’t remember the story at all however desired to have been more familiar with to at least make a fair comparison between the two. I was not particularly interested in watching this movie partially due to its needless use of computer generated characters. It was however much more enjoyable than I would have thought, but it was rather useless to have made the whole thing animated, I was lost in the chiclet teeth.

PLOT Beowulf is the story of a Viking hero named Beowulf who has come to the aid of King Hrothgar and his village which has been under attack by a beast known as Grendel. Grendel is similar to my upstairs neighbor in that every noise she hears throws her into a crazy cat lady fury and she comes tearing through my condo eating my party guests. With the promise of much gold Beowulf arrives with his ginger friend and promises to rid the village of the monster. One the eve of his battle, they throw a party and Beowulf flirts with the queen before deciding that a fair battle is one that requires him to be naked.

With the death of Grendel, revenge is desired by the mother and Beowulf quickly sets of to defeat the witch but instead of slaying her, he strikes a deal with offers too great to refuse. With the curse of the witch placed upon his head, Hrothgar gives him the thrown and the burden of his conscience.

FINAL THOUGHT Not familiar with the tale, I knew the gist of it and I thought the movie did a fine job not just telling the tale, but revealing the characters. They were clever in writing it so that Grendel was sympathetic and that the humans were in fact the monsters for misunderstanding him and the mythical character of Beowulf was fallible, flawed and quite an unreliable narrator rather than a standard hero. I was pleased with the film and enjoyed it quite a bit, but was constantly distracted with the CGI. There was little to the effects that required a strictly digital cast and the computerized characters themselves were dead ringers for the actors whose voices were used.