I went into this movie with low expectations. The trailers did not look promising and I have a burning hatred of this so called "performance" capture technique. The characters looked like something in a high end video game cinematic.

Unfortunately, all my low expectations were met not only for the "animation" (I don't consider motion-- excuse me-- "Performace" capture to be animation) but for the storytelling as well.

Lets start out with the "animation"... it's hit and miss really. Sometimes the human characters look okay and it makes me forget I'm watching an "animated" film but other times they look just strange and it's distracting. Not as horribly zombie like as the humans in Polar Express but still... something isn't quite right with the eyes. And the movements are definitely a step up from Monster House (which is a better film then Beowulf in many ways).

Generally, the main characters were the best looking. The background characters a lot of the time looked like like the rubbery humans seen in the first Shrek movie.
The dragon was the best looking character in the whole movie. He, as far as I know, was not mo-capped . I guess the mocap crew decided that he was impossible to do with the motion capture process so they were forced to let some of the 50 or so animators actually ANIMATE and not just spend hours cleaning up the mocap footage.

Dysfunctional technology aside, the story itself was radically changed from the original. Beowulf is supposed to kill Grendel, kill his mother, and kill the dragon... let's just say that it doesn't exactly happen that way. There's kind of a strange plot twist thing going on.

Grendel himself was sissified into a thing to be pitied rather then the powerful demon straight from the depths of hell we see in the original story. And his mother was even worse... Angelina Jolie nude with an accent.

That's just a sample of how the story was butchered.

It's not ALL bad though, the cast is good and the acting is solid. It's just not a great movie. Too bad they had such great talent go to waste.

I say wait for the DVD or just skip it, your not missing much and it's not worth paying $8.00 to see in a theater.

5 out of 10.