Beowulf

For a certain sort of person Robert Zemeckis's The Polar Express (2004) was an instant Christmas classic, an unexpected adaptation of a flimsy children's book* brought to life through magical motion-capture CGI. For others (like me), it was creepy: Tom Hanks' face scaled off his skull and morphed into plastic-looking people like a silly putty death mask. So I laughed at the first previews but I was willing to buy into Zemeckis's new Beowulf. If your characters are already going to look terrifying, why not make half of them monsters and the other half vikings?

I guess I won't spoil the plot--even though it's edging into its 1000th year of telling, the story still got some "whoas" and "oh shit"s from the crowd at Gallery Place. And the plot doesn't entirely follow the letter of the poem, anyway, although few adaptations have. Screenwriters Neil Gaiman and Roger Avery depart from the Middle English (the only characters who speak in it are Grendel and his mother, and she only uses it speaking to him) and write in scenes of vikings ogling bouncing boobs, Anthony Hopkins' king yelling for "MEAAAAD" as his toga tumbles off, and Angelina Jolie's gold-encrusted camel toe.

Does that sound ridiculous? It sort of it is. But this is a movie whose ridiculousness must me embraced full on, with both arms, like a teddy bear or a drunk you're trying to tackle to the ground. You probably need to see it as I did, with $2 3-D glasses (included in your ticket price) at one of the 3-D screenings. There are lots of superfluous shots of rats running down woodpiles and arrows flying at the screen that will seem silly unless you're enveloped in the experience. The non-silly stuff -- the battles with Grendel, a fight with sea monsters, a ride on a dragon -- probably work even without the glasses. They start with the sort of action that would seem snug in an old Harryhausen film and then go all Keith Richards-in-the-70s on you -- I can't reach this monster's heart with my sword, but what it I cut off my arm and use my increased mobility to punch it? Stuff like that.

The higher-minded themes that Gaiman and Avery add in -- the rise of Christianity, the "sins of the father," the impotence that comes with kingship -- well, I don't think they resonated among all the brutality and CGI. But they make a guilty pleasure a bit less guilty.

Rating: 7/10

*not bad, just really brief