Beowulf: Critic Reviews

Beowulf is a solemnly gorgeous, at times borderline stolid piece of Tolkien-with-a-joystick mythology.

You don't need to wait for Angelina Jolie to rise from the vaporous depths naked to know that this Beowulf isn't your high school teacher's Old English epic poem.

once you have acclimatised yourself to the animation style, it tells a cracking good story, and the screenplay by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary conjures a secret history of vulnerability and human weakness behind the legend.

As envisioned by director Robert Zemeckis, Beowulf is a sight to behold: The landscape and visuals are powerfully sweeping, the action sequences exhilarating and kinetic.

I say the story works, but I wish they'd teach these avatars to act.

Not all of it works -- and not all of it works the way the target audience of jacked-up young males might want it to -- but the movie is hugely provocative fun, and I'm pretty sure that's on purpose.

Beowulf is as dazzling a feast for the eyes as the hungriest eyes can take.

It's imaginative, and it has the barreling forward motion and lurching thrills of a Dark Ages theme park, even when it's exercising battle-worn cliches.

I can't speak for the standard-issue version, but the souped-up extravaganza is one of those experiences that remind you of the magic that movies are capable of conjuring.

Am I the only one who suspects that the intention of director Robert Zemeckis and writers Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary was satirical?

As far as cinematic mythology goes, this film flies only so high. And call me anti-Geat, but I was rooting for Crispin Glover's Grendel all along.

Their story arc brings some legitimate dramatic interest to Beowulf's climactic battle with the dragon.

Zemeckis, who blazed trails mixing live-action with animation in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, blazes not even a footpath here.

The adaptation replaces the two-dimensional characters of the epic poem with more human, nuanced individuals.

It's more dazzle than disaster, but the technical ambitions of Beowulf work too sporadically to be completely effective, while the screenplay adaptation of the classic story suffers from serious bouts of corn poison.

To the shock of cynics in the audience waiting for this film fantasy to be lame, Beowulf turns out to be exciting, fun and occasionally breathtaking. No question it's a popcorn flick, but it's cheesy only when it chooses to be.

For all its visual sweep and propulsively violent action, this bloodthirsty rendition of the Old English epic can't overcome the disadvantage of being enacted by digital waxworks rather than flesh-and-blood Danes and demons.

Beowulf can be a lot of fun to watch -- at least in the 3-D IMAX version I saw.

Zemeckis has found the dark psychological underpinnings of this Dark Ages tale, and his version of it will endure even as the technology he used to tell it is replaced by something even more stunning.

Heads roll, arteries gush and spleens spill across the IMAX screen in Beowulf, just as you'd expect in a screen adaptation of the oldest surviving epic poem in the English language.

As it stands, Zemeckis's movie is only the beta version of the blockbuster of the future, ridden with imperfections that will presumably be corrected in later upgrades.

Beowulf is ambitious, overbearing and hollow; it goes overboard to impress, yet it never feels truly inventive or imaginative.

Comic-Con geeks and cinephiles alike will gape at the resplendent imagery (but don ye specs, and see it in 3-D).

Regardless of the medium, this is an effectively brutal story of swords, sorcery, demons, and heroes, with an Oedipal hint or two thrown in for flavor.

It may raise the eyebrows of English Lit professors but will quicken the pulse of everyone else.