Beowulf in 3D

If you have depth perception, you're really going to love the new 3D technology that they are using in films like Beowulf. I can't handle text in 3D with the glasses for some reason, but the action and the characters all were in focus and had great depth in the scene. I liked the Monsters of the Deep film we saw a few weeks back better than Beowulf, however. Spoilers are behind the cut:

I hadn't read anything about the storyline of this one, so I was surprised to see how it told the standard song and then deviated. Like a lot of Gaiman's work, this story is actually about storytelling. The Song of Beowulf we know is wrong, a lie that Beowulf told.

This aspect is set up well, with Beowulf's unreliability established early on in his storytelling of the race. I found that I never really liked Beowulf very much. The problem was, I never really liked anybody, except perhaps Grendel himself, and I don't think I can blame the slightly lifeless 3D animation either.

The technique of animation here has improved significantly from that creepy dead-eyed train movie, but the faces are still not animated to a degree in which they come a live. Another couple of years, and yeah, maybe they will cross the uncanny valley, but I think they're still skirting dangerously close to it. The women in particular all looked awful. Robin Wright Penn's character looked as if she was botoxed half to death, and also on about double the recommended dose of Ambien. That may have been the look they were going for, but I doubt it.

The gags were funny but in a forced way. The Austin Powers-esque penis obfuscation gags during a tense fight? Kind of working at odds with the fight scene, don't you think?

Okay, so Beowulf makes a deal with Grendel's mother to provide him with another son, yada yada. Here's where the film lost all dramatic tension for me. I don't think I was expecting an old Beowulf, past his prime (but seemingly just as capable of whooping ass as the Beowulf 5 minutes/30 years prior). At the point the dragon busts out, we get some great effects (made even greater by the 3D) but I was, sadly, a bit bored.

The story itself had already essentially played out. Yeah, he'd stab the dragon in the throat, (thanks magical drinking horn! You're like a video game cheat sheet!), kill his son, probably die in the process or kill himself one way or another, and we'd get a new king, a new temptation, and... what have we learned?

Man is weak when tempted by Angelina Jolie.

I didn't a 3D spectacle costing $11 a person to explain that great truth.

Still... the 3D was cool. And it didn't give me a headache this time.