Beowulf

While I enjoyed the immense undertaking of the CGI effort to create this film, I felt the story wasn't all that interesting in the 3rd act, in fact, I would say that it pretty much limps to the finish, even though there is a good action sequence at the end, it didn't much resonate with me, leaving me with a "eh" reaction to the film on the whole. I can't say the characters were developed all that well, which contributed to my non-empathetic response to the overall film.

The Austin Power-ish nude sequence was played too cute in a sequence that could have been much more powerful and ferocious, the viewer is asked to spend a little too much attention on what "clever" things would pop up to hide Beowulf's nakedness.

The dead eyes from The Polar Express is almost a thing of the past in this film, although I did see the RealD 3-D presentation, the dead eyes crop up here and there, like for John Malkovich's character (in one early sequence, I thought he was a blind man because that's how his eyes reacted) and also Anthony Hopkins' character (the eyes slip into a quasi-buffoonish look to them, like they weren't quite anchored to anything in the scene). The 2-D presentation is easier to take in all the details as the 3-D tends to obscure the fine rendering of each frame and things look a little blurry for the 3-D effect to take effect. I wouldn't advise skipping the 3-D presentation because it's pretty nifty, but it causes the film to have a slightly darker tone to it, while the 2-D version is a smidge brighter and provides more details to the CGI rendering.

I give it 2.75 stars, or a grade of B-.