Ok, a few more. First of all, to call what this movie features "animation." Um, no. Toy Story 2 has animation. The Incredibles has animation. Even Sleeping Beauty has animation, and it's far from my most fave Disney movie.
See, making cartoon drawings move, by itself, isn't animation any more than putting piles of meat on sticks and moving them around--Meat Puppets, to coin a phrase--would be acting. For real animation, you need (not to be too didactic)...soul. And Beowulf doesn't have a drop of it.
The voice performances don't help either then. With the possible exception of Anthony Hopkins, a stooge on the Abbott and Costello radio show could give better performances than these.
So it's not good as animation, then. What about simply as a visual experience? Sometimes--not always, but sometimes, artful visuals make up for a few cracks in the characterization and such (look at Tron or even The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers).
And again...no. Visually, Beowulf is a computer game, and computer games cannot be art. As I'm at least half-convinced James Cameron is going to find out this year, to his frustration.
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