Memorable, crazy movie

Best movie ever!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

In a besieged land, Beowulf, a stranger is drawn to the darkness and must battle against a creature named Grendel and his vengeance seeking mother. This is an odd mixed medieval, scifi and steam punk version of the 6th Century poem Beowulf. It has a pumping score and soundtrack with great visuals and plenty of over the top dialogue and action. Despite a made TV feel director Graham Baker offers leather, weapons, castles, dungeons and a practical rubber suit Grendel hidden behind some CGI reminiscent Predator mixed with Alien.With the prowess of Filmation's He-Man Christopher Lambert is Beowulf, sporting a Sting-like bleached hairdo. Corset squeezed Rhona Mitra is stunning as Kyra although given little to do. Model Layla Roberts shows up as the Grendel's mother and a succubus to effectively woo Oliver Cotton who plays Hrothgar. Former Bond bad guy Götz Otto also features and The Mummy's Patricia Velasquez briefly appear as Pendra. The cast wrestle with the script and for unexplained reasons the voices of the main cast have been re-dubbed (with their very own voices) which can be distracting as the timing of the loop is slightly off like an old kung fu film.Even though made prior to The Mummy Returns the CGI Scorpion King looking monster in the closing act isn't as convincing as Lambert's stunt double's Rutger Hauer looking hair and somersaults.It hasn't budget or the finesse of The 13th Warrior (1999) or Outlander (2008) and lacks the seriousness of Beowulf and the Grendel (2005) but it's far more fun than the lustre 2007 3D Beowulf version.Watch it if only for the costumes and Mitra.

First, I gave it 5/10 points arbitrarily... I don't honestly know how to rank this film.You know those movies that are so bad they're good, even great? Well, this isn't one of them... This movie is so bad that it's... bad.So why five points? Because it's just a really weird, bad movie that didn't actually leave a bad taste in my mouth afterwards. Yes, I watched it late at night when I couldn't fall asleep, which is the only sane reason to watch this movie. And I've seen some movies that just offended me such that I hated them afterwards, but this movie isn't one of them. This movie DID have some thought and purpose at some point, it's just up to the viewer to figure out when it was, what it was, and what it was supposed to be.The cast and acting is... interesting. Imagine my surprise when I see Mac from Night Court standing atop the 'castle' look out early in the film! What??? And Christopher Lambert apparently turned down Mortal Kombat 2 to do this movie (and had the same Raiden hair still) because the movie at the time had a real low budget of $25M... which was later whittled down to around $3.5M, about enough for the production company to cater the set with Ramen noodles during the shoot. It even has Gotz Otto, who is actually a decent actor, and Rhona Mitra who is an even more decent actress...And Grendel's Mother is a genuine Playboy Playmate! And it shows!!! The movie is filmed on location in Romania... why? Who knows, probably because it was cheap. The scenery is unremarkable at best. Apparently it was not a pleasant place to film at either. The sets aren't bad when you consider they were working with a budget more apt for a weekly TV series episode than an actual feature length film. I think a large portion of the film's budget went towards matches and lighter fluid, as there are an abundance of candles and torches in almost every scene.If only some of that candle money had been spent on the CGI stuffs... which is all horrible. I was in school during that era, and happened to be in a class where we were playing with various 3D art and rendering programs. I think based on that experience, it's safe to say whoever did the CGI in this movie had never actually done so before, and/or hadn't taken the same classes I had, or it may have turned out a little better.The props, specifically the weapons... What can I say? The king carries a non-op chainsaw blade on a stick... and that's par for the course. I get that somehow the viewer is supposed to know in advance that this is a 'post-apocalyptic future', and that the prop guy was shooting for a feeling of weapons constructed of anything that such a people could get their hands on... But why does the castle have electricity for things like the PA system and the Weapon's Master's honing wheel, all the doors make a hissing sound like they're being hermetically sealed (it's a big open drafty castle, mind you), dinner is served in pristine disposable foil serving dishes (probably robbed from the Ramen noodle catering truck), and every dead person gets their own personal, plastic body bag with a zipper on it?!?!? I think I like this film for these reasons, because you know this movie drove the director to drink, at least, and that after the first day of shooting the cast just sort of showed up everyday to shoot the movie, knowing that they were making a turd, but by Gods it was going to be a polished turd if they could help it! I mean seriously, I'm willing to bet that the dinner scenes were real! They shot them at actual meal times, brought the food from the catering truck onto set with them (served in those awesome disposable foil containers) and sat there and read their lines while having dinner with each other. Why not, right? 5/10 points, because it's not a horrible movie that leaves you wanting that hour and a half back from your life, but because it's a horrible movie that leaves you feeling so bad for the cast and crew that you can't help but want to give them something to console them... even if it's just five points in an internet review...

I've given this a six purely for having the nerve to make such a film!! This film is OK to watch when you have a hangover and want to gawk at Rhona mitras cleavage that's about it.......I'm not going to write a review as such because its hard to write about something so ridiculous lol Instead I will list the following;-Black vikings wearing bifocals. smoking tobacco before tobacco was brought to Europe! bronze age vikings living in huge castles built of stone hahahaha. I laughed all the way through this film..... It's seems the director thought gay club music was appropriate for a "period" movie.......I especially liked Rhona mitra wearing lingerie!! This is the earliest film I've seen Rhona mitra in and my god she is hot. It was worth sitting through just to see her :-) I was particularly amorous towards my girlfriend after watching this, she wondered what got into me. Do not tell her it was Rhona Mitra please.......There's a lot of machined metal around for bronze age vikings....... WTF! a zipped up plastic bag to put the body into the furnace? I didn't know zips were invented back then hahaha. To top it all off was the loud speaker and PA system hahahah!!! I didn't realise they had night vision telescopes back then..... Apparently back flips and front flips are a sound sword fighting battle technique..... Overall the action scenes were laughable. The sword fighting was a joke. This film falls into the category of its so bad its good (well almost good) at the least it was entertaining.

Why is it, I have asked myself so many times, that the earliest piece of Anglo-Saxon literature known to man—the epic poem of Beowulf, whose author remains unknown—has been given the poorest of treatment over and over again when somebody decided to bring it to the screen. I have seen three separate adaptations of Beowulf, two low-budget productions and one big-budget adaptation that all, unfortunately, proved to be nothing more than travesties and unasked-for disasters. And this 1999 film is not only very unfaithful to the original poem, but very likely the worst of the seemingly always-disappointing Beowulf adaptations.The basic plot is still the same as in the poem, but the way it's worked out in the screenplay is alien. A monster-fighting hero named Beowulf (Christopher Lambert) answers a kingdom's cry to fight an evil creature called Grendel (Charles Robinson) and the monster's vengeful, humanlike mother. To state a fact, I'm not a purist. I was frankly not expecting a faithful adaptation. If I got one, I'd be surprised. But I was certainly hoping for something that I could at least recommend as passable. I didn't get it."Beowulf" is a clunky, poorly-put-together disaster of a motion picture that boasts nothing, for there is nothing to boast. The acting, even that by Christopher Lambert, an always interesting actor, was unqualified and poor, to be charitable. The cinematography was very dark and gloomy and at times, especially during the special effects sequences, it was hard to tell exactly what was going on (big surprise). Basically, it's a gloomy-looking movie and a very gloomy-feeling movie as well. It's dark, slow, ponderous, uninteresting, and overall a waste of time. And sometimes it seems as though the film's not sure what it's supposed to be. Is it suppose to be an epic? A monster film? A poignant story? Or some clunky love story with out of place sex sequences? And the special effects? Don't even get me started on the special effects. They were awful, let's put it that way, especially in regards to Grendel's mother.But as poor as all of this way, I would have gladly taken it as opposed to these verbose and unnecessary monologues and subplots that seem to twist up and control the movie. Sometimes it's almost as if the screenwriter forgot about the main purpose of the plot. Full of bad dialogue, poor special effects, a lack of vibrant colors, and no interesting moments, "Beowulf" is a disappointment of the lowest category. The great poem has yet to be done justice on screen. This is one of the reasons why.