Beowulf Review
by Jonathan Moya (jjmoya1955 AT yahoo DOT com)November 25th, 2007
Beowulf (2007)
A Movie Review By Jonathan Moya
Rating: 3 out of 5, or B.
The Review:
Angelina Jolie's nude animated body dripping with what looks like caramel syrup is the big fan boy highlight of Beowoulf. She is a water demon, so she is wet all the time-which is three times the amount she is actually ready for Brad. She rises slowly from a phosphorescent blue puddle, the voice oozing the come-on of a Transylvanian whore, the breasts honeyed perfection, her vertical smile obscured in a golden aura, her cloven hooves in the exact shape of a pair of $600.00 Manolo Blahnik oro gold pumps with the four inch stiletto heels- the perfect temptation of every man doomed to hell.
This is the second time that Robert Zemeckis has animated female perfection. The "I'm not bad, just drawn that way," Jessica Rabbit was first back in 1988 with Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The nineteen year difference is how long it took nature to catch up with art. The naturally perfect Jolie is not just bad- she is nasty!
Actually, Zemeckis tries for a perfecta. Ray Winstone's Beowulf has sweeping golden hair contained in a braided headband, six pack abs, bronze muscular thighs clothed in cinched leather briefs that hide the whispered about third leg of every mead maiden's desire, and a rock solid ass. He carries himself with the immodesty of a porn star. If Beowulf never quite comes off as a six and half foot sculpted god it is because the knowledge of the really 5' 9", 240 pound Ray Winstone of Sexy Beast fame fogs the vision.
That chiseled manliness in its almost full glory bounces around like a Jai-Alai pelota (with incidental shlong exposure obscured by convenient obstructions) in the early battle between Beowulf and Grendel (Crispin Glover in screeching mutant pain), the monster that King Hrothgar (a mostly half-nude Anthony Hopkins) wants Beowulf to kill because it interferes with the whole Danish community's desire to feast, wine and fornicate itself into oblivion. "No singing, no merry making of any kind," is King Hrothgar's decree until the hero comes.
Grendel, a pitiful mass of strangulated blood vessels and seared muscles with the hearing of a bat ingests the Danish merriment assaulting his ulcerating eardrums with all the irritation of the Grinch listening to the Whos down in Whoville singing carols. In one of the more unusual tracking shots of all filmdom it sleighs over hills and dales, over a river and through woods of bramble branches, a jabberwocky of alliterative
senselessness.
When Grendel crashes the party every cell and follicle of him cries out for cessation. He shunts, shoos, swishes aside, chomps off the heads of any noisy warriors brave enough to assault him- until Beowulf shows him the door, sending him screaming home to mommy(the caramel delicious Angelina Jolie), his severed arm now the mighty Geet's trophy.
Grendel dies near the lap of his mother, an innocent little boy crying softly about the bully who beat him up. In revenge, Grendel's mother slaughters a troop of Danes sleeping off another big revel. Their carcasses are strung upside down from the mead hall ceiling like bats hanging from a cave roof.
If the monster seems more human than the man it is because the man is really a monster underneath all that sculpted perfection. "I know that beneath you're glamour, you're as much a monster as my son," Grendel's mother says to Beowulf-intent to rid the Danes of yet another horror.
She proposes the bargain that was the seed of Hrothgar's cursed kingdom, and would be the curse of Beowulf's realm fifty years on at the end of a soul breaking, bloody lifetime of empire building. "Are you the one they call Beowulf? Such a strong man you are. A man like you could own the greatest tale ever sung. Beowulf. . . Stay with me. Give me a son, and I shall make you the greatest king that ever lived. This. . . I swear."
Zemeckis's first performance capture spectacle The Polar Express was a holiday sugar plum marred with creepy The Nightmare Before Christmas side effects. The process which involves filming actors as they performed in Lycra suits studded with myriad digital sensors couldn't capture eye movement in coordination with face and body. The result: skin tones with a ghostly pallor, a Santa Claus with a pedophiliac glint and elves with all the warmth of hobgoblins. The whole train trip was the Rapture to hell.
For Beowulf the Zemeckis design team added a color palette of sun, fire and gold; and created an EOG device (electrooculography) that synced eye movement with body performance. Now, the men are bronzed-- only the women are deathly pale. And in a small step up, the eyes are drunk and dazed instead of crazily demented.
However, the monsters are glorious. Grendel and his mother are a twosome that rock to their own delightfully twisted dance steps. Grendel's molded confusion perfectly mirrors the emotional chaos inside him- visually Edvard Munch's The Scream turned flesh. With screeching authenticity, Crispin Glover captures the whole mad howl of this monster's existence. Jolie's alluring beauty matched with the reptilian voice never let's one forget the she-demon inside. Like Medusa her true self is only glimpsed in reflection. And the dragon at the end is a model of scorched earth burnished perfection.
The screenplay by Neil Gaiman (the Sandman graphic novels) and Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction) fills in the holes of the Beowulf saga with some oddly appropriate Freudian slush and oedipal intrigue. The update keeps the tales mythological spine while giving it a tragic dimension-- some Joseph Campbell relevance for the generations weaned on the Star Wars six-pack.
Zemeckis directs with all the solemnity of a Viking funeral. The similar Trojan War and death epic 300, released earlier this year, was all eye-popping, muscle bulging, pulpy testosterone-but it at least it had a level of ironic fun, and stirred things up visually. Beowulf is all juice by contrast. It doesn't want to spoil the read for those few high school English teachers that may be watching. The Zemeckis that did the Back to the Future trilogy and Who Framed Roger Rabbit knew how to goose and pop the script to make it fun while keeping it classic. Beowulf is just classic. In-between the set pieces its rich aesthetic values had me yawning.
Even with the dust blown off this tome, Beowulf gets a B.
The Credits:
Directed by Robert Zemeckis; written by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, based on the epic poem; director of photography, Robert Presley; edited by Jeremiah O'Driscoll; music by Alan Silvestri, with songs by Mr. Silvestri and Glen Ballard; production designer, Doug Chiang; senior visual effects supervisor, Jerome Chen; produced by Mr. Zemeckis, Steve Starkey and Jack Rapke; released by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 114 minutes.
WITH: Ray Winstone (Beowulf), Anthony Hopkins (Hrothgar), John Malkovich (Unferth), Robin Wright Penn (Wealthow), Brendan Gleeson (Wiglaf), Crispin Glover (Grendel), Alison Lohman (Ursula) and Angelina Jolie (Grendel's mother).
"Beowulf" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Gory violence and a naked Angelina Jolie avatar.
Copyright 2007 by Jonathan Moya
Beowulf (2007)
The Review:
Angelina Jolie's nude animated body dripping with what looks like caramel syrup is the big fan boy highlight of Beowoulf. She is a water demon, so she is wet all the time-which is three times the amount she is actually ready for Brad. She rises slowly from a phosphorescent blue puddle, the voice oozing the come-on of a Transylvanian whore, the breasts honeyed perfection, her vertical smile obscured in a golden aura, her cloven hooves in the exact shape of a pair of $600.00 Manolo Blahnik oro gold pumps with the four inch stiletto heels- the perfect temptation of every man doomed to hell.
This is the second time that Robert Zemeckis has animated female perfection. The "I'm not bad, just drawn that way," Jessica Rabbit was first back in 1988 with Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The nineteen year difference is how long it took nature to catch up with art. The naturally perfect Jolie is not just bad- she is nasty!
Actually, Zemeckis tries for a perfecta. Ray Winstone's Beowulf has sweeping golden hair contained in a braided headband, six pack abs, bronze muscular thighs clothed in cinched leather briefs that hide the whispered about third leg of every mead maiden's desire, and a rock solid ass. He carries himself with the immodesty of a porn star. If Beowulf never quite comes off as a six and half foot sculpted god it is because the knowledge of the really 5' 9", 240 pound Ray Winstone of Sexy Beast fame fogs the vision.
That chiseled manliness in its almost full glory bounces around like a Jai-Alai pelota (with incidental shlong exposure obscured by convenient obstructions) in the early battle between Beowulf and Grendel (Crispin Glover in screeching mutant pain), the monster that King Hrothgar (a mostly half-nude Anthony Hopkins) wants Beowulf to kill because it interferes with the whole Danish community's desire to feast, wine and fornicate itself into oblivion. "No singing, no merry making of any kind," is King Hrothgar's decree until the hero comes.
Grendel, a pitiful mass of strangulated blood vessels and seared muscles with the hearing of a bat ingests the Danish merriment assaulting his ulcerating eardrums with all the irritation of the Grinch listening to the Whos down in Whoville singing carols. In one of the more unusual tracking shots of all filmdom it sleighs over hills and dales, over a river and through woods of bramble branches, a jabberwocky of alliterative
senselessness.
When Grendel crashes the party every cell and follicle of him cries out for cessation. He shunts, shoos, swishes aside, chomps off the heads of any noisy warriors brave enough to assault him- until Beowulf shows him the door, sending him screaming home to mommy(the caramel delicious Angelina Jolie), his severed arm now the mighty Geet's trophy.
Grendel dies near the lap of his mother, an innocent little boy crying softly about the bully who beat him up. In revenge, Grendel's mother slaughters a troop of Danes sleeping off another big revel. Their carcasses are strung upside down from the mead hall ceiling like bats hanging from a cave roof.
If the monster seems more human than the man it is because the man is really a monster underneath all that sculpted perfection. "I know that beneath you're glamour, you're as much a monster as my son," Grendel's mother says to Beowulf-intent to rid the Danes of yet another horror.
She proposes the bargain that was the seed of Hrothgar's cursed kingdom, and would be the curse of Beowulf's realm fifty years on at the end of a soul breaking, bloody lifetime of empire building. "Are you the one they call Beowulf? Such a strong man you are. A man like you could own the greatest tale ever sung. Beowulf. . . Stay with me. Give me a son, and I shall make you the greatest king that ever lived. This. . . I swear."
Zemeckis's first performance capture spectacle The Polar Express was a holiday sugar plum marred with creepy The Nightmare Before Christmas side effects. The process which involves filming actors as they performed in Lycra suits studded with myriad digital sensors couldn't capture eye movement in coordination with face and body. The result: skin tones with a ghostly pallor, a Santa Claus with a pedophiliac glint and elves with all the warmth of hobgoblins. The whole train trip was the Rapture to hell.
For Beowulf the Zemeckis design team added a color palette of sun, fire and gold; and created an EOG device (electrooculography) that synced eye movement with body performance. Now, the men are bronzed-- only the women are deathly pale. And in a small step up, the eyes are drunk and dazed instead of crazily demented.
However, the monsters are glorious. Grendel and his mother are a twosome that rock to their own delightfully twisted dance steps. Grendel's molded confusion perfectly mirrors the emotional chaos inside him- visually Edvard Munch's The Scream turned flesh. With screeching authenticity, Crispin Glover captures the whole mad howl of this monster's existence. Jolie's alluring beauty matched with the reptilian voice never let's one forget the she-demon inside. Like Medusa her true self is only glimpsed in reflection. And the dragon at the end is a model of scorched earth burnished perfection.
The screenplay by Neil Gaiman (the Sandman graphic novels) and Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction) fills in the holes of the Beowulf saga with some oddly appropriate Freudian slush and oedipal intrigue. The update keeps the tales mythological spine while giving it a tragic dimension-- some Joseph Campbell relevance for the generations weaned on the Star Wars six-pack.
Zemeckis directs with all the solemnity of a Viking funeral. The similar Trojan War and death epic 300, released earlier this year, was all eye-popping, muscle bulging, pulpy testosterone-but it at least it had a level of ironic fun, and stirred things up visually. Beowulf is all juice by contrast. It doesn't want to spoil the read for those few high school English teachers that may be watching. The Zemeckis that did the Back to the Future trilogy and Who Framed Roger Rabbit knew how to goose and pop the script to make it fun while keeping it classic. Beowulf is just classic. In-between the set pieces its rich aesthetic values had me yawning.
Even with the dust blown off this tome, Beowulf gets a B.
The Credits:
Directed by Robert Zemeckis; written by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, based on the epic poem; director of photography, Robert Presley; edited by Jeremiah O'Driscoll; music by Alan Silvestri, with songs by Mr. Silvestri and Glen Ballard; production designer, Doug Chiang; senior visual effects supervisor, Jerome Chen; produced by Mr. Zemeckis, Steve Starkey and Jack Rapke; released by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 114 minutes.
WITH: Ray Winstone (Beowulf), Anthony Hopkins (Hrothgar), John Malkovich (Unferth), Robin Wright Penn (Wealthow), Brendan Gleeson (Wiglaf), Crispin Glover (Grendel), Alison Lohman (Ursula) and Angelina Jolie (Grendel's mother).
"Beowulf" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Gory violence and a naked Angelina Jolie avatar.
Copyright 2007 by Jonathan Moya
http://jonathanmoya.com/
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
