Synopsis:

Beowulf is the big screen adaptation of the legendary English poem, speaking of a warrior fighting dragons and demons to save the English people.  The film starts with a small kingdom, its King (Anthony Hopkins) a drunken ruler and his advisor (John Malkovich) an arrogant tailcoater.  A demon attacks the kingdom and the king puts out a reward for any man who can save them.  Beowulf arrives with his gang of warriors and attempts to earn the reward.  The real intrigue enters when Beowulf meets the demon's mother (Jolie).  She promises Beowulf a life of ruling the kingdom, for a small but valuable price.

The Freak's Rating: B- : Robert Zemeckis continues to attempt to create movies without any actual direction of acting in the latest computer generated flick, Beowulf.  Computer generated actors are no doubt the future of animation and the progress they have made since The Polar Express, just a few short years ago is dramatic.  You can see from the picture above that Angelina Jolie truly was captured perfectly for the film.  So though the animation still freaks me out a little, you are able to lose yourself in the film, much like live action.

As I said, the animation is something of a spectacle, with a "how did they do that?" popping into your mind every 5 minutes or so.  That said, there are still major flaws with it.  Motion continues to be the true problem with this technology as some scenes look incredibly fake when characters are moving.  Stationary scenes look as realistic as I can imagine a computer making them.  The motion capture of Jolie is the most impressive of the film, with Hopkins and Malkovich looking a tad off.  Overall it is a good retread of the classic poem and as entertaining as I believe it wants to be.  A little tighter of a storyline and it goes further up in my book.  At this point, if this seems like your cup of tea it probably will be.

Brian's Rating: C : An adaptation of an old Anglo-Saxon poem, and the story line is about what you would expect.  I agree with Scott that the animation is downright distracting at times.  It looks to me like the real faces of the actors/actresses were used and everything else was animated.  It was distracting to have a live face with an animated body.  If the faces were also animated, then it was distracting that the faces were life-like, but most of the rest was "almost" life-like.

Not a bad movie, but nothing memorable, and so I give it an average rating.

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