I didn’t think much of this at first. I even thought I’d be bored seeing as how they are trying to use real actors’ expressions on animation – I was right. But the story and action in the end saved it all.

The big problem here is while they are trying to make the characters resemble their actors, it’s like a step back in animated technology where the movements and fluidity are compromised. Grendel’s mother didn’t even look like Angelina Jolie for a lot of parts.

Many a time you’ll see close-ups on faces which are just bad and irrelevant. I guess the technology hasn’t reached that stage yet in terms of having life-like facial features. At this point, they are better off making something like what Shrek came out to be.

Funny thing is, Shrek 3 didn’t seem to have improved much from Shrek 2 or even the first one. And this one, which used the same technology as The Polar Express, also didn’t see much improvement from 3 years ago.

Rather than trying to replace actors with technology, they really should have made a real movie out of the great Beowulf. It would have been awesome to have another Lord Of The Rings type of movie. There wasn’t anything here that they couldn’t produce life-like on the silver screen, be it Grendel tearing limbs apart or the dragon blowing fire. It would have been so much better.

The quality here is just like watching the short movies in a video game at best.

Rating: 7 / 10

(all images from imdb.com)