superstonewarrior I've never read the original Beowulf story but movie is incredibly entertaining. Ray Winstone's performance as the titular geat had me infested the entire time and the CGI, for being 11 years old now, is simply fantastic. The only flaw I can think of is that towards the start of the third act(around the 40 minute mark) the film hits a storytelling slump. That's all. More films like this which celebrate the male gender need to release in current day.

generationofswine It was just too much...but to be fair I saw it in 3D. The none 3D version may have actually been better, but honestly I have no way of knowing.At first it was, well, it was wow. I had never actually seen anything in 3D, being far too young for for the first round of popular 3D movies to hit the theater, but my father assured me it was nothing compared to this...He also assured me it didn't make him as nauseous, and sometimes I can see where he's coming from on that point.It came out right in the first wave of the new 3D, right when 3D was becoming popular again and actually worth it.And it was jaw dropping even if some of the motion made my old man sick.But it was also too much. A new technology and one that was a spectacular in itself, but not exactly tested to perfection.It seemed like a 14 year-old girl putting on make-up and not yet understanding that less is more.Less than half an hour into it, I had no idea what was going on, the 3D was too distracting to even attempt to follow the plot.About an hour into it, the 3D got boring, and yes, still over-the-top distracting.By the time I left I had the feeling that I had just experienced something that I had never experienced before. I had the feeling that watching a movie on the big screen would never be the same again...but I still couldn't figure out if I saw a movie or not.

BA_Harrison I try to steer clear of motion-capture CGI that attempts to border on realism: I either want my films to be live-action footage or clearly animated. I find the awkward middle ground just a little unsettling. That said, with such a cracking tale (the original poem is a thousand years old—stories don't endure for that long if they're crap), superior acting from a solid cast, and masterful storytelling by director Robert Zemeckis, I'm willing to make an exception in this case.Zemeckis's film does deviate from the original story a tad, which might upset the literature purists, but since the average cinema-goer probably has as much in-depth knowledge of the Beowulf legend as I have of the inner workings of the Hadron Collider, I can allow a little artistic license. With such an epic narrative, enjoyable action scenes, cool monsters, a naked digital Angelina Jolie, and a CG rendering of the main character's ass for those who like that sort of thing (thankfully Beowulf looks nothing like Ray Winstone), there surely is something for everyone.

Sean Jump The first problem this film has is that it simply isn't BEOWULF. It may be inspired by the classic saga of a Nordic warrior and his battles with diabolical monsters (Grendel, Grendel's mother, and a particularly wicked dragon), but it certainly isn't a faithful adaptation of that seminal poem. The script makes huge alterations in both the plot and characters, resulting in a story that has only vague similarities to its source. Grendel isn't a very formidable monster in this film, and his mother, as essayed by Angelina Jolie's CGI avatar, is transformed from a loathsome goblin to a devilish seductress. As for the CGI animation, I've seen both better and worse. The dragon comes across very well in animated form, and is actually one of the most fearsome looking fire- breathers the movies have given us, but the humans all look quite fake and even rather silly. Beowulf isn't the man he is in the original saga, either, where he is portrayed as an honorable and even God-fearing warrior of Good. In this film, he is not merely flawed, but duplicitous, and certainly no Christian (for whom he has little respect). Unfortunately, the film as a whole shows a similar disdain for the poem upon which it is based. Better film adaptations are the also unconventional but basically honorable efforts of BEOWULF AND GRENDEL starring Gerard Butler and THE 13TH WARRIOR featuring Antonio Banderas. As for this film, it is an unreserved failure, save perhaps as a parody of the great work from which it is spawned.