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Beowulf

More so than usual, you’re going to want to shop theaters if you want to see Robert Zemeckis’ animated adaptation of the Olde English epic poem: It’s being shown in IMAX 3D, regular IMAX, digital 3D and conventional 35 millimeter. I saw it in digital 3D and, as a wearer of eyeglasses that usually manage to make 3D films unwatchable, had no trouble: The effects were easy to view without the usual “ghosts” or patches of miscolored images. It’s obvious that a great deal of skill went into crafting the presentation. So it’s a shame that the movie itself is such lurid, yahoo-pandering crap, making 300 look like mid-period Ingmar Bergman. (I left about halfway through; if it changed significantly afterward, let me know, but I’d be awfully surprised.) The animation process is, as far as I can tell, the same that Zemeckis used on The Polar Express, using motion capture technology to turn live actors into cartoons. It’s a process with a built-in drawback: The figures look so realistic that the aspects in which they are less than realistic feel like flaws. The characters are lifeless and generally unpleasant to look at. The effect is made worse by Zemeckis’ determination to rub our noses in ugliness at every chance. The fact that he was able to get this gruesomely violent mess a PG-13 rating is one more instance of proof that the ratings board at the MPAA is simply there to do whatever the studios deem commercially advantageous. (Especially at this time of year, a PG-13 film makes a lot more money than an R-rated movie.) I shudder to learn that Zemeckis is currently working on an adaptation of A Christmas Carol to be released in 2009, as much as I do to realize that Beowulf will almost certainly be the top-grossing film of the week.