I saw this movie today with my wife, who won tickets on some competition. It also came with a not-too-shabby hat. But how was the movie?

Well, if you're a fan of the Beowulf story its pretty good, and keeps to the original tale pretty closely right up to the confrontation with Grendel's mom. At that point it departed from the original close to entirely, and kind of killed the movie for me. I mean, I know movies rarely adhere strictly to their sources, but to be spot on on the plot points then all of a sudden make it something totally different.

Of course, the tickets we won werent for the IMAX 3d, but the fight scenes were still pretty entertaining. Just one thing that bugged me is i have no idea why they decided to make the movie CGI. I mean, there have been plenty of action movies with great fights and special effects without going totally animated, and i just dont understand why they decided not to shoot in the traditional way. In my opinion all the CGI just sort of detracted from the whole experience in the way some of the characters move just looked so fake.

Another choice that made me scratch my head was the Grendel fight. for some reason the people who made the movie decided that Beowulf fighting the monster bare handed like in the book wasnt enough, he has to fight him totally nude. Not even a loin cloth, just totally nakers. Of course, that led to a number of shots where Beowulf's junk was awkwardly covered by random stuff in the foreground. A guys arm, a sword stuck in the table, etc. Which, not like i really wanted to see Beowulf's CGI nuts, but all the stupid cliche crotch-covering just seemed super corny.

One nice touch was that while all of the characters spoke in modern day english, Grendel and his mom spoke in Old English, or at least very Old Englishly, like with the accent if not the actual vocabulary they would have used. That made the monsters seem like, an ancient evil or some such.

Anyway, overall the movie was alright, but far from what i was expecting. But, then again, i was expecting a lot because Beowulf is just such an over-the-top awesome character. I was expecting the next 300, but instead it was well, not as great as that. On a scale of great to terrible i would give it a "meh"...or like a 6 out of 10.