By Armond White

Beowulf
Directed by Robert Zemeckis


“A man needs glamour to be a king,” intones Angelina Jolie. She plays the stripperific serpentine mother of the half-man amphibian monster Grendel in Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf. Whichever screenwriter (Neil Gaiman or Roger Avary?) came up with this queer notion of heroic masculinity didn’t have the conviction to override Zemeckis’ basic, asexual commitment to technology. In Beowulf, Zemeckis isn’t interested in history or mankind’s warrior instinct; he’s concerned about 3-D effects that make beer mugs and rodents project from your lap more than how they come toward you. This advance feels like a regression.

When Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon dragonslayer, comes to rid sixth-century Denmark of its subjugation, chaos and superstition, Grendel’s mother sizes him up: “Underneath your glamour, you are as much a monster as my son.” But the ambiguous virtues of heroism—derived from the first Old English narrative—get insufficient play in this animated film. Zemeckis actually does less scrutinizing of masculine sexuality than Zack Snyder’s flirty, soft-core cartoons in 300. (Snyder’s pulchritude rivaled G-Men by Jirayia.) Even this film’s Iraq War allusions to religious and secular conquest take second-place to Zemeckis’ determined use of new technology to represent human behavior. Adding movement and 3-D illusion to graphic novel aesthetics remains substandard to photo-realism.

Despite almost exaggerated attention to physical details, Beowulf neuters sensuality. It’s obvious that Zemeckis uses the voices of famous actors (Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone, John Malkovich, Crispin Glover) to disguise the fact that he’s testing ways to do without actors altogether. But his animated figures (mutated from Lord of the Rings’ Gollum) are jug-headed and clumsy. They retain that awful mechanical-mannikin look from Polar Express. Even Jolie, doing one of her exotic sexy accents, is visualized absurdly—a sea creature with high-heel hooves and, yet, nipple-less.

Winstone’s Beowulf is more successful. He’s been given Sean Bean’s physical appearance and watching the athletic movements of his superb naked cartoon body is fun. (Especially the way Zemeckis wittily hides his privates with various phallic symbols; it shames Cronenberg’s stodgy bathhouse battle-royale in Eastern Promises.) Plus, Winstone’s theatrical British cadence makes the most of Beowulf’s bluster. He taunts the monster: “Ripper! Tearer! Slasher! Gouger! I am strength and lust! I am Beowulf!” Too bad the teenage market for such campiness won’t seriously connect it to Western heritage. Last year, filmmaker Sturla Gundersson made a splendid straight-faced adaptation in Beowulf and Grendel. It was mindful of heritage, bloodlust and religious history. Alas, it lacked Zemeckis’ Hollywood hype. So youth who no longer have to read Beowulf in school will only know this quasi-video game, 3-D travesty in which superficial glamour replaces anthropology.