Dan's Papers - December 7, 2007 -

It's easy to see that Angelina Jolie's body was tailor made for 3-D movies. Her huberously endowed body parts can match any of the gazillions of diverse objects, spewed from the screen, to knock your eyes out and then some. Back in the 1950s, all they could come up with were things like spears and fireballs. Today, in the $150 million "spectacular" three-dimensional Beowulf, when Angelina appears on screen butt-bald-nekked and dripping gold vapors, you could lose more than an eye!

You can guess that this Beowulf is a far cry from the ages-old epic poem that found fame in 1999 with a beautiful translation by poet Seamus Heaney. No, this movie version doesn't even resemble the best seller. It is the ambitious project of Oscared director, Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump). Determined to make it into the big blockbuster for today's audiences, he had the comic book dream team of Neil Gaiman and Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary put up the bombastic, extra large everything of mythological mayhem and have it laced with sex. Ms. Jolie, bad girl, wicked demon mother is pure invention. She does not exist in the poem. Gee, the director and writers sure have creative minds. She can flip from vamp to monster in a sec, but no one can take their eyes off of you-know-what long enough to catch the change. Her son is the big-time monster Grendel. Under all that disgusting, half-rotted, snake scaled stuff is Crispin Glover and a lot of the time he's flying across the screen in contrast to the human characters who slog mushily.

The great warrior, Beowulf, portrayed by Ray Winstone, cuts a trim figure, complete with six-pack abs, thanks to performance capture that maps the expression and makeup characteristics and rebuilds them into a cross between animation and computer enhancement. This terrific body, trimmed of his sexy beast love handles, will serve the action well for the battles of righteousness ahead. In the Danish kingdom where he fancies the fancy of the Queen, played by Robin Wright Penn, he says he will fight Grendel for the King, a computer scammed Anthony Hopkins. Grendel saves them from a search for him and shows up at the partying. Don't know if Beowulf had too much mead or whatever, 'cause he quickly rips off his short shorts and throws himself into the battle careening off walls and Grendel is completely naked. (What with Grendel's mom's lack of apparel, do we see a theme here?) Golly, a heroic-sized, naked superhero flailing away in 3-D! There could be some terrible incidents of audience whiplash scarring but, no such fun. Miraculously, as with Bart's naked streak in The Simpsons Movie, something keeps appearing between Beowulf's privates and the searching eyes of the audience.

Performance Capture was also used by the director for The Polar Express, still around as a Christmas Holiday standard. I don't think there's that much steam behind Polar Express. The computer generated performance capture was not that well perfected. The "humans" like Tom Hanks looked too artificially weird. Still, the most convincing characters are the "make believe" ones because they are becoming more believable. The Dragon that Beowulf must slay is wonderful. It is his last battle to win. The Dragon can really move and it is all skillfully captured as the Viking hunk, a bit aged, has to keep up with the fast, dive bombing monster. You have no problem trying to decipher the countenance, features and feeling of the make believe cast. Whereas, King Hrothgar hardly looks like Anthony Hopkins.

Beowulf, the movie does come through on the rest of the technology - it is super. It creates a soulful medieval world of the 500 A.D. with a glistening super form. Every rise and fall of the landscape reaches out into the audience and almost caresses it. Not oddly, Ms. Jolie's body does the same (yikes, better than cheese Danish.) The added popping of 3-D gives sweeping fantasy a joy ride. Steep angles, stunning vistas slide past your nose. Of course, Beowulf is also available in plain old 2-D at most theatres, not bad but you don't get to wear the cute Tom Cruise specs. They work, and, they don't give you a headache. Technology-wise, there's still a lot of bang in the whiz-bang effects, in the non-3-D extravaganza of the Dark Ages. It's all there - castles, huge dark woods, caves glistening with treasure, fabulous creatures. The huge budget for computer generated wonders has given a lot of bang for the buck but, what computers can't generate is real emotion.

Guy-Jean de Fraumeni is the producer, writer, and director of award-winning European and American Feature Films. He has been a judge at major Film and TV award competitions, including the Oscars, the Emmy's and various film festivals. Sarah Halsey assists him.