TrueJoshNight
Truly Dreadful Film
Grimossfer
Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%
SeeQuant
Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction
Philippa
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
athabsca
A Cult Classic with much history in its making. One worker in Romania building the castle - being paid with booze actually died falling from a tower. Not funny-but shows what filmmakers will do to make a film and save $. This Beowulf is a film to watch with a group of fun friends. It is the futuristic version of the story made by the makers of Mortal Combat. There are wild physical and special effects, with creative set design modeled after Claes Oldenburg. The music for the action sequences was added later by Miramax and some love it others don't. It has a following in Europe and South America, where it had a theatrical release,-those who adore Christopher Lambert, Rhona Mitra, a playboy bunny, and much more- will particularly enjoy it. A I was watching the film I found myself laughing at times when I wasn't supposed to be- but that made it particularly fun. It also shows how a film can be at war with itself- the producer and director at war with each other. The story of much of Hollywood! Be in an alerted state watching and have a blast.
lastgoldrush
What. Uh...This movie is so dissociative and messed up that I literally lost a bit of my sanity after it was over. I will never be the same person again. I'm trying to put my finger on what, exactly, is so completely insane about it... It's not just the hilarious techno music, or the "outside of time" medieval/Blade Runner/wild west/Highlander setting, or the weird CGI "Grendel" monster that looks like a man made out of animated sausages, or even the "Grendel's mother" monster, which looks like some Alabama table-dancer who grew claws and tentacles when she stayed in the tanning bed too long. All of those things are weird, but what's really the strangest thing in this movie is the acting. I simply can't explain. This script is obviously, hellishly silly, but the actors exude deadly seriousness through it all. Lambert is always weird, and usually kind of boring, but for this one he's gone into Dolph Lundgrin territory: I can't help but just start laughing every time he talks.I will give this movie some credit for being completely scatter-brained and crazy as opposed to conservative and boring. I'll always take a bizarre disaster of a film over an utterly mediocre one.Warning: if you are planning on watching Christopher Lambert as Beowulf, be prepared to spend several hours thereafter wandering the streets in some kind of nightmarish, hyperactive-catatonic daze. It's true. When I was done with my Beowulf spirit journey, I woke up in the middle of the Siberian tundra in a puddle of blood and milk. There was a dead wolf lying next to me, and I later found I had a handful of human teeth in my shirt pocket. My VHS copy of Beowulf was sitting on a hastily-constructed stone altar nearby, enshrined with candles and wilted flowers. The tape told me to walk. I rose and I walked.
Casper Jansen
The film with Christopher Lambert as Beowulf is even a "love it" or "hate it" film. So I'm going to place myself between those two, just for being opposing. But the truth is that I actually enjoyed the film for what it was. Christopher Lambert has never been a favourite actor of mine, mostly because of his trying-to-be-cool look, which I never have been able to take serious. And his role as Beowulf is not helping on my opinion about this, and he even has white hair...'Beowulf' is based on the ancient legend by the same name, which is about the hero Beowulf coming to the land of Danes (Yahoo!) to fight evil. It is written in ancient English in the year 1.100, and now comes the movie.So, if you are able to summon lot of bad acting, smart action, bad one-liners, distorted rock music and cheesy special effects, you have an action movie - with Chrisopher Lambert. But 'Beowulf' ends up being a mostly enjoyable film anyway ,looking very 80'-ish and having a lot of unintentionally funny moments.This film is, if anything, perfect at a DVD night with the guys.
DonJohn80
This was my first exposure to Beowulf, so I didn't find my views of the film coloured by the closeness (or lack thereof) of the plot or anything of that sort. Just had to point that out since I find peoples reviews of adaptations are usually heavily based on source material. First thing I want to point out is that the "futuristic setting" barely comes into play. If you're expecting a big sci-fi film, or avoiding the film because of the sci-fi you should know that the only real futuristic elements are a high tech telescope, a castle that doesn't even look like anything, and the pizza cutter of doom wielded by one of the extras. I suppose the soundtrack gives it a sci-fi type feel, since it makes use of a lot of techno. Unfortunately I found the soundtrack quite uneven. Some of it was good and suited to the scene, some of it was so bad I turned on subtitles and muted my TV. Most of the soundtrack just had me thinking "do I know this song or did they just rip off a song I know?" The music wasn't the only uneven thing though, some of the acting in this film was atrocious. Lambert manages to keep his wry charm, Rhona Mitra was quite impressive, and Layla Roberts was good at what little she had to work with. Everyone else ran the spectrum from mediocre (the king... was he a king... I was kinda lost on that) to something that looked like the role was filled by the first hobo they could find (the assistant weapons master). Fight choreography was sadly lacking, so don't expect an awesome action flick. The monsters were kind of lame, so don't count on oohing and aahing at the effects. In truth, this film had the potential to be very great as a bad film but the few descent actors and good bits to the soundtrack raised the bar so it was mostly just bad. Personally, I like Christopher Lambert and I like bad movies, so I liked it... just not as much as I could have with a bit of tweaking.