Beowulf

    A movie called Beowulf is lethargically making the TV rounds in that brief programming window wedged between prime time Seinfeld reruns and late night/early morning Paid-Programming scams.
    With nothing better to do (as usual) and after avoiding the film for several years, I remoted it the other evening thinking it might be a misspelled werewolf flick with a few sexy female vampires thrown in to spice things up. After fifteen minutes of cursory viewing and cursory beer-drinking it became apparent that the thing was an exercise in digital crap aimed at proving that technology can turn anything into compost, even a 1,500-year-old epic poem. Worse yet, the only nudity to show up was Anthony Hopkins as the unpronounceable King Hrothgar flaunting a CGI-enhanced gut and, later on, a muscle-bound male animatron with an upper-lower-middle-upper class British accent ("I am Beowulf! And I'm 'ere to kill your monstah") flaunting a CGI-enhanced six-pack.
    Nevertheless, transfixed by sloth and decrepitude, I kept the show on rather than rise from my beloved grease-stained mouse-gray leatherette recliner that I had purchased for $50 from a consignment store in Amherst, hoping that things might develop in a more toward* fashion as the night wore on. Just as my jaw was relaxing into a mummified gape and both lids were reaching half-mast I wakened with a start: What to my wondering eyes should show up, but Angelina Jolie with a bare-naked butt!

                
                Angelina as Grendel's mom and Ray Winstone as Beowulf. (Guess which one's
                     which. Hint: Angelina has one hell of a pigtail and can walk on water in stilettos.)

    I snapped awake in a trice as if falling out for inspection during my days at Field Artillery OCS at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, before I was kicked out for immaturity, cowardice, and the lack of sufficient neck fat to create rolls under my chin when standing at rigid attention.
    Angelina, it soon developed, was none other than the mommy of a socially challenged and outstandingly homely young monster named Grendel (Crispin Glover gussied up and drooling saliva like Johnny Depp in a remake of the Creature from the Black Lagoon). Six-Pack, you see, had vanquished poor Grendel during an interminable mixed-martial-arts contest on the flimsy pretext that Grendel liked to dine on Scandinavian villagers ─ as though any self-respecting monster would eat a Scandinavian when far more succulent morsels were available in nearby Paris. It should be noted that both Beowulf and the monster were titillatingly naked during the bout bringing back fond memories of Sacha Baron Cohen in his amazingly disgusting wrestling match with Azimov in "Borat."
    So anyway, Angelina, being a good mother, is, like, y’know, totally pissed off at Beowulf for murdering her little bundle of green slime (Ah! Mother Love) and, with the iron logic of Hollywood executives, decides to take vengeance on Beowulf’s six-pack, by seducing it into impregnating her ─ not too difficult a task, in my ‘umble opinion, as one glance at Angelina’s bod would demonstrate.
    After what is undoubtedly a lengthy gestation, the resultant issue turns out to be a really big guy-dragon. Why a dragon? Why not a duck or a cow? Simple. Dragons look really great in 3-D while ducks and cows just look stupid.
    At this juncture the plot, along with the motion picture, begins to decay at an ever-increasing rate until pretty much everyone, everything, and everybody except Angelina is dead, dismembered, disemboweled, and/or incinerated and the audience is headed to the rest rooms to puke from watching all the 3-D effects.
    Will there be a sequel? Christ, I hope not.
    So what’s my point?
    Just this: Who the fuck ever heard of a monster named Grendel? Geez, the Anglo-Saxon jerk who wrote the damn poem back in the sixth century or whenever might as well have called it Bruce or Shirley or MaryJane.
    Hey, wait a minute, I have a better idea: How abut naming it Barney Frank. Try picturing Barney in the nude cavorting on the beach in Fire Island. Now there’s horror for you.
——————————————————————————————————————
*: Note that "toward" is the antonym of "untoward"

Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net

 

What did you think of this article?




Trackbacks
  • No trackbacks exist for this post.
Comments

  • 8/2/2010 12:07 PM Loren wrote:
    I couldn't stand this movie either. The "animation" is a joke of filters atop real actors doing the scenes on green-screen. I guess the artists who did the scenery deserve some kudos, but all in all, unimpressive both visually and content-wise.
    I should be working.
    Reply to this
Leave a comment

Submitted comments are subject to moderation before being displayed.

 Name

 Email (will not be published)

 Website

Your comment is 0 characters limited to 3000 characters.