Beowulf (2007)

Now it's not often that I watch an animated feature, and I never expect very much of them if I do, but this was really good.

CGI has certainly got more advanced in recent years and this was state-of-the-art stuff all the way. Even though it still looked pretty much like an elongated cutscene from a computer game, I really enjoyed it.

Maybe it's because I was already familiar with the Beowulf story or maybe it was seeing Angelina Jolie naked, but, either way, I got thoroughly engrossed in it all and it didn't seem to matter after a while that Ray Winstone's character looked more like Sean Bean than Ray Winstone or that Anthony Hopkins was a strangely Welsh sounding Danish king.

Really the only place I can fault this is with the sound. Some of it was too shouty and unintelligible. I know the Danish language bits were supposed to be but I got a bit confused at times when I couldn't even understand what was being said in English!

This film also loses points with me for Angelina's fake Russian accent. I don't understand why a Danish demon should have a Russian accent. Oh well, if the king can be Welsh and Beowulf a cockney then I suppose it all makes sense.

I would still recommend this to anyone though as the action scenes are really impressive and it wasn't too kiddified.

My rating: 7 out of 10.