"See you in the morning, Odin willing," says Anthony Hopkins's King Hrothgar to Ray Winstone's Beowulf in Robert Zemeckis's 3-D version of the oldest and potentially most boring epic in the English language.
At this point, Hopkins is wearing what one can only call a revealing shroud, saucily slit down one side, and drinking much too much mead - as one might if one had gone to bed with one's mother-in-law and been rudely refused conjugal rights.
But at least you can recognise him, unlike our Ray as Beowulf, who has been digitally transformed into a chunky he-man resembling Sean Bean who fights stark naked, causing the film-makers to place various pieces of furniture in front of his vitals so as not to disturb the sensitive.
The 3-D makes this easy enough to accomplish, but even so, it's a relief that the vitals in question don't come swinging towards us like the spears, pots of mead and the severed heads of dragons that do jump out of the screen. This would be an amazing movie, much like Zemeckis's The Polar Express, if only the screenplay had been less titter-worthy.
Perhaps I simply don't get it, and Zemeckis's intention was to make an adventure story about ancient times with some post-modern humour attached. But I don't think I can remember a cast of such skilful actors, who include John Malkovich as Unferth, the King's son, Robin Wright Penn as the young Queen and Angelina Jolie as the sylph-like be-tailed dragon mother, reduced to mouthing such silly lines.
But, I suppose, the 3-D spectacle is the thing. And that, once you accept some jerky movements from the principals, is great fun. Beowulf's fight with the dreaded dragon who has cursed the King is particularly well accomplished. But why no loincloth, for heaven's sake?
The background work, too, is smashing, though nothing like as detailed as Pixar's Ratatouille and, if the screenplay does one thing decently, it is to make some sort of sense of a most confusing story.
Here, Beowulf comes to rescue the King from the dragon, falls for the Queen, is tempted by the dragon's mum and goes from being a boorish thug to a soldier of honour. To hell with the poetry of the original text, which was largely written by monks who probably edited it as much as Zemeckis does.
I don't think, however, they would have sanctioned the line uttered by one of Beowulf's henchmen to a busty Danish beauty: "How about a gobble?"
Beowulf
Cert: 12A
