Going in with poor expectations probably helped a great deal, but I found this plenty enjoyable enough. I have only the vaguest notion of the original poem, so the deviations really didn’t bother me. Rather, I found this to be an engaging enough fantasy tale, of heroes and monsters, and clever little traps.

The CGI is a bit weird – new things always are – but well done for what it is. Some have asked, why bother, but I guess they didn’t want to waste time having their cast buff up a la 300 (coincidently, Sparta’s king, Gerard Butler, did a Beowulf movie a couple of years back, it just didn’t see much light of day) (and irony: getting a cast of unknowns to reshape themselves dramatically is a helluva cheaper than paying a bunch of actors a lot of money, and then paying even more to computerise over the top of them!).

Anyway. It does add a layer of interest, as does the 3D. Admittedly, the novelty had pretty much worn off before the opening credits were done, but there were a couple of good bits with it.

I wouldn’t throw out an open recommendation, cos you do have to be in to that kind of thing, and willing to take it as a novel experience rather than just an okay-ish movie.

While the movie/story itself wasn’t all that spectacular, the 3D thing was pretty cool.