CONSUMER alert: Angelina Jolie’s role as a demon is nearly as brief as her costume in Robert Zemeckis’ highly entertaining – but far from classic – digitally enhanced version of the Olde English epic “Beowulf.”
As viewers of the much-downloaded “red band” trailer know by heart, Angelina’s computer-generated avatar rises from a pool of water wearing nothing but some gold paint, a tail and high-heeled cloven hoofs.
In her one major scene, about five minutes an hour in, she vamps it up in what sounds like a modified version of her Bela Lugosi accent from “Alexander.” She is heard but not seen in an earlier sequence with her wounded son, has a 10-second appearance later on – and her character returns briefly for a wordless climax.
Jolie’s appearance as Grendel’s nameless but hubba-hubba mom – described as “that swamp-thing from hell/the tarn-hag” in Seamus Heaney’s best-selling 2000 translation of the anonymous 10th-century poem – may be brief and more than a little campy.
But besides boosting what promises to be a very healthy opening weekend at box office, she provides crucial motivation for the title character.
In this lusty Hollywood version, Beowulf rises to the throne of Denmark after striking a Faustian bargain with Grendel’s mom, only to pay an awful price when he has to face a dragon 50 years later.
Screenwriters Neil Gaiman (“Stardust”) and Roger Avary (“Pulp Fiction”) have made this musty classic so accessible – and filled in its narrative gaps so inventively – that you wish Zemeckis had filmed it as an R-rated, live-action movie that could have been potentially great.
Instead, Zemeckis has employed motion capture – the same technique he used to lesser effect on “The Polar Express” – in which the actors who provide the voice also don suits with electronic sensors that “capture” their performances, which are combined with computer-generated background and props.
“Beowulf” can be a lot of fun to watch – at least in the 3-D IMAX version I saw – but it’s hard to forget for long that you’re stranded in a waxworks netherworld between live action and animation.
The title character is played by Ray Winstone, a short, stocky, middle-age British character actor.
While Winstone provides some excellent line readings and body language (particularly in the later sequences), his towering character looks more like svelter, younger “300” star Gerard Butler, who as it happens starred as Beowulf in a low-budget, live-action version of the same story filmed a few years ago in Iceland.
Perhaps because of this disconnect, Winstone’s Beowulf is sometimes upstaged by his co-stars.
Some of their characters – notably Anthony Hopkins’ aged King Hrothgar and John Malkovich’s conniving Unferth – are modeled rather closely on the actors, while Robin Wright Penn’s long-suffering Queen Wealthow and Brendan Gleeson’s Beowulf sidekick, Wiglaf, are not.
The biggest scene-stealer here is the eccentric character actor Crispin Glover, who in a coup has been cast as the monstrously misshapen yet strangely sympathetic Grendel, who looks like a cross between Popeye and a slaughtered side of beef.
The film’s high point is probably Grendel’s lengthy one-on-one battle with a full-frontal Beowulf, which has been amusingly choreographed so a variety of objects strategically hide his private parts.
The character animation in “Beowulf” isn’t in the same universe as Pixar’s best work. Eyes are creepily devoid of life compared to “Ratatouille,” and humans’ skin textures are often closer to high-end video games than first-class animation.
And even with motion capture, some of the movement is almost as herky-jerky as Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion fantasies of the 1960s.
And yet, although there is a tendency toward blurring when the camera or objects move too quickly, “Beowulf” contains some of the most spectacular 3-D effects I’ve ever seen. I wonder if the 2-D version most people will be seeing is anything near as effective.
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BEOWULF
The Lord of the Pixels.
Running time: 115 minutes. Rated PG-13 (intense violence, nudity, sexuality). Tonight at the Lincoln Square IMAX, the Chelsea West, the Union
Square, others.