Roger Ebert

In the name of the mighty Odin, what this movie needs is an audience that knows how to laugh. Laugh, I tell you, laugh! Has the spirit of irony been lost in the land? By all the gods, if it were not for this blasted infirmity that the Fates have rendered me, you would have heard from me such thunderous roars as to shake the very Navy Pier itself down to its pillars in the clay.

To be sure, when I saw ìBeowulfî in 3-D at the giant-screen IMAX theater, there were eruptions of snickers here and there, but for the most part the audience sat and watched the movie, not cheering, booing, hooting, recoiling, erupting or doing anything else unmannerly. You expect complete silence and rapt attention when a nude Angelina Jolie emerges from the waters of an underground lagoon. But am I the only one who suspects that the intention of director Robert Zemeckis and writers Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary was satirical?

Truth in criticism: I am not sure Angelina Jolie was nude. Oh, her character was nude, all right, except for the shimmering gold plating that obscured certain crucial areas, but was she Angelina Jolie?

Zemeckis, who directed the wonderful ìPolar Express,î has employed a much more realistic version of the same animation technology in ìBeowulf.î We are not looking at flesh-and-blood actors but at special effects that look uncannily convincing, even though I am reasonably certain that Angelina Jolie does not have spike-heeled feet. Thatís right: feet, not shoes.

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Ray Winstone provides the voice and physical performance for the animated character Beowful.

The movie uses the English epic poem, circa 700 A.D., as its starting point and resembles the original in that it uses a lot of the same names. It takes us to the Danish kingdom of King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins), where the king and his court have gathered to inaugurate a new mead hall, built for the purpose of drinking gallons of mead. The old hall was destroyed by the monster Grendel, whose wretched life consists of being the ugliest creature on earth and destroying mead halls.

To this court comes the heroic Geatsman named Beowulf (Ray Winstone), who in the manner of a Gilbert and Sullivan hero is forever making boasts about himself. He is the very model of a medieval monster-slayer. (A Geatsman comes from an area of todayís Sweden named Gotaland, which translates, Wikipedia helpfully explains, as ìland of the Geats.î) When the king offers his comely queen, Wealthow (Robin Wright Penn), as a prize if Beowulf slays Grendel, the hero immediately strips naked, because if Grendel wears no clothes, then he wonít, either. This leads to a great deal of well-timed Austinpowerism, which translates (Wikipedia does not explain) as ìputting things in the foreground to keep us from seeing the family jewels.î Grendel arrives on schedule to tear down the mead hall, and there is a mighty battle, which is rendered in gory and gruesome detail, right down to cleaved skulls and severed limbs.

Now when I say, for example, that Sir Anthony plays Hrothgar, or John Malkovich plays Beowulfís rival Unferth, you are to understand that they supply voices and the physical performances for animated characters who look more or less like they do. (Crispin Glover, however, does not look a thing like Grendel, and if you are familiar with the great British character actor Ray Winstone, you will suspect he doesnít have six-pack abs.) Variety reports that Paramount has entered ìBeowulfî in the Academyís best animated film category, which means nothing is really there, realistic as it may occasionally appear. I saw the movie in IMAX 3-D, as I said, and like all 3-D movies, it spends a lot of time throwing things at the audience: spears, blood, arms, legs, bodies, tables, heads, mead and so forth.

The movie is also showing in non-IMAX 3-D, and in the usual 2-D. Not bad for a one-dimensional story.
But Iím not complaining. Iím serious when I say the movie is funny. Some of the dialogue sounds like Monty Python. No, most of the dialogue does. ìI didnít hear him coming,î a wench tells a warrior.

ìYouíll hear me,î he promises. Grendel is ugly beyond all meaning. His battles are violent beyond all possibility. His mother (Jolie) is like a beauty queen in centerfold heaven. Her own final confrontation with Beowulf beggars description. To say the movie is over the top assumes you can see the top from here.

Now about the PG-13 rating. How can a movie be rated PG-13 when it has female nudity? Iíll tell you how. Because Angelina Jolie is not really there. And because there are no four-letter words. Even Jolie has said sheís surprised by the rating; the British gave it a 12A certificate, which means you can be a year younger and see it over there. But no, Jolie wonít be taking her children, she told the BBC: ìItís remarkable it has the rating it has. Itís quite an extraordinary film, and some of it shocked me.î

Hereís the exact wording from the MPAAís code people: ìClassified PG-13 for intense sequences of violence including disturbing images, some sexual material and nudity.î How does that compare with a PG rating? Hereís the MPAAís wording on ìBee Movieî: ìClassified PG for mild suggestive humor and a brief depiction of smoking.î I have news for them. If I were 13, Angelina Jolie would be plenty nude enough for me in this movie, animated or not. If I were 12 and British, who knows?

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Roger Ebert, a Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic, is a syndicated columnist based at the Chicago Sun-Times.