Review of Beowulf (2007) by Lanning : — 27 Mar 2011

I have forced myself to sit through the entire viewing of every Beowulf adaptation ever made. The reason? I'm an English major, and Beowulf is one of the true stars of English literature. It's a matter of principle as well; I refuse not to see every one of them to the end, no matter how bad they may be.

I've not yet found any version that is true to the original, although some are more true than others. This one is quite a take-off on the original, but that's not the only reason why I'm still waiting for a superior adaptation.

I don't mind huge deviation from originals if the result is truly great. One thing that is truly not great about this one is the use of computer generated images of the actors that try to approximate the actors.

I'll say the same thing I said about Final Fantasy a long time ago: Why not just do live action with the actual actors? Special effects magic being what it is today, you can have flesh-and-blood actors do anything anyway, so why not? I tell you the most disappointing thing about this one, however, has nothing to do with the movie itself.

It has to do with the extras on the DVD -- which I almost never watch. What I really wanted to hear from someone I admire, like Robert Zemekis, is how he fell in love with Beowulf when he first read it.

Sorry to say, that's not the case. What I get to hear is that he, like EVERYONE else who was forced to read it in school, was bored stiff by the story. Everyone? You know what, Bob? When you speak in universals like that, you remind me of the ego-centric flavor of young adults who masquerade as "students" on college campuses these days: They aren't really in school to learn; they're in school to teach everyone around them that they know it all already and are always right about everything.

They read a page about something on Wikipedia, and all of a sudden they think they're world-renown experts on the subject. Writing from that type of student sucks, just like the writing of the script for this movie.

Bored, Bob? You don't know the meaning of the word until you sit through a showing of your little movie here. However, to give this baby its due, it didn't suck as boringly bad as some of the stuff I've been choking down recently, like, say, The Social Network or Winter's Bone.

A great cast can do a lot to overcome lousy writing. I won't say they ALWAYS can overcome lousy writing, because I tend to shy away from using universals like that. But here, they do. A little. Like two stars worth.