Critics reviews

Beowulf feels like a pretty solid Wellesian assault on the business-as-usual of cinema. [Zemeckis is] making two movies at once. The first one is the one that comes from welding classical bits of mise-en-scene to a rather funny script by Avary and Gaiman, who whipped up a decent re-make of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance... The second film is the one Zemeckis the Booster & Showman makes to showcase the anarchic, disruptive potential of the technologies at hand—3D in the land of motion capture.

So as the rock solid edifice that was the epic poem Beowulf is gradually undermined by cheap Freudianisms, what keeps the proceedings bearable is the investment of its performers, an investment not wholly buried under the copious layers of animation. Aside from the distraction engendered by Ray Winstone's buff, hairless, and far-from-reality body, the cast is allowed as much room to breathe as the technology allows, which in this iteration is a surprising amount.

The 3-D is necessary to the film only in so far as it keeps your eyes engaged when your mind starts to wander. Stripped of much of the original poem's language, its cadences, deep history and context, this film version of "Beowulf" doesn't offer much beyond 3-D oohs and ahs, sword clanging and a nicely conceived dragon, which probably explains why Mr. Zemeckis and his collaborators have tried to sex it up with Ms. Jolie, among other comic-book flourishes.