Beowulf

The future of fantasy never looked so dark! Christopher Lambert gets to fight the evil demon Grendel in this grim looking trashy fantasy-epos. "Epos" I said? Er... there's only one location, so you can't really call it an epic adventure, can you? The location is a medieval/futuristic 5 inch tall castle, so how did they manage to cram in all the actors? Oh, I get it, those where special effects. A miniature. Silly me.

Here's some reasons why you might want or NOT want to watch this motion picture:

• Lambert gets to do his sword-swinging tricks over again like he did in Highlander.

• The sets and costumes are amazingly cool (if you're a 12-year-old).

• Rhona Mitra has a voluptuous pair of knockers which she likes to show off through-out the whole movie.

• ...er, Christopher Lambert has white hair...

• Every time they start fighting, this over-the-top raving techno-soundtrack gets going. So why are these medieval slayer-dudes fighting while they should be dancing.

• They don't have electricity in this castle but they do have speakers installed which seem to work fine. So where's the amplifier? I guess they borrowed it from the techno-dj who delivered the soundtrack.

• Watch it for the climax in the end which features an outrageous demonoïd CGI creature coming straight out of any Playstation 2 survival-horror game.

If all this got you interested, then go watch it (at your own risk), but don't tell anyone I told you to. I strongly suspect Pinhead visiting the set while shooting, because this movie has no soul. Anyway, if you want to see beautiful Rohna Mitra really show some skin, then watch Paul Verhoeven's HOLLOW MAN.

We screened this movie in a club as an example of how classic literature can become twisted into some of the most awful movies of all time. Just the fact that the back of the box proudly proclaimed the plot to be set in the "techno-futile" future should have been enough of a hint. I think that word describes the movie itself, because no matter how much technology they tried to use to save this movie, the effort was completely futile. Not to mention that our club advisor told us that it allegedly couldn't get a distributor for two years.

This cinematic failure is littered with cheesy, cliche dialogue that's worse than angsty teen poetry. Beowulf's character changes halfway through in a way that is in no way credible, and whenever he's in an action scene, he's constantly flipping like a hyper gymnast. There is even, as they say, a "token black guy" whose attempts at humor are completely out of place. And, of course, the daughter of the leader of the outpost Grendel is terrorizing is a total vixen. A vixen whose breasts are exposed throughout the entire movie. A vixen who wants to fight the creature, yet she never puts on armor. And her weapon of choice is a little carving knife. And despite their dire situation, she still dresses up for dinner, in a dress with a see-through skirt that exposes her short-shorts underwear. There are a couple scenes that could pass as soft core pornography, and in the second scene they even reuse footage from the first. I thought the portrayal of Grendel was bad enough, but then came the end of the film, which featured a display of CGI that might be decent for the 80s, but is totally ridiculous for a late 90s venture. I could go on, but you all should watch this film for the fully laughable effect yourselves.

The other club members and I did manage to have fun watching this by taking a cue from MST 3K and mocking it the whole way through. I'm still reeling from an extra's weapon: a perpetually spinning pizza cutter on a pole.

I've heard many things about Beowulf, maybe because i'm from Romania and a good part of the movie was filmed here, in my country. And i expected a lot from this film. At the end, i was disappointed. It is not as horrible as other users said, but it's definetely bad. It's all about a monster killing people in a 6th century castle and Lambert the one who comes to kill him. Lambert is good, as he is in all his roles, but the rest of the characters suck, and the action isn't too good either. Plus maybe the only thing that could've saved this film, the special effects, are also very bad, the monster looks awful (not scary, but awful). Oh and another bad thing: the music. The movie tries, and manages to create the 6th century atmosphere. But all the action sequences are presented on rock music, which is very very bad. I mean action on rock works perfectly on a movie like Charlie's Angels - where that's the perfect way to shoot your action. But here, that was a very bad idea.

Vote: 4 out of 10.

I liked this movie. At some points I was wondering "What's with the music?" and "Is this with the time period?" stuff like that. Kyra, to me, was an over-feminest, big cleaveged woman, wearing pants. Now, I'm not a historian nor do I actually know enough, but I thought women didn't wear pants in the 6th century. If I am wrong, I stand corrected, but that doesn't sound right to me. Beowulf's leather outfit reminded me of a Keanu Reeves wannabe. Grendel's mother is a Pamela Anderson look~a~like who would make a better porn star than a real actor.

Alright, so it may sound like I hate this movie, but I did like it. I never read Beowulf, but plan on doing it, eventually, so my opinion on this movie is based on seeing it alone.

Overall: 6 1/2 out of 10.

I thought this movie was alright, even though it didn't follow the actual tale of Beowulf. Now I did notice several people commenting about the time period and wondering about clothing and all. This movie is supposed to be set at some future time period ya'll!