The winter movie season is officially on in the U.S., with studios pulling out both their award contenders and their late year charges for box office supremacy. Last weekend I was able to catch two such offerings: Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf and Kevin Lima's Enchanted.
Beowulf
directed by Robert Zemeckis
starring (in motion capture and voice performances)
Ray Winstone, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins and Robin Wright Penn
It seems to me that since the dawn of the iMax 3-D format, no other director of feature-length films has pushed the envelope further than Robert Zemeckis, who started out strong three years ago with The Polar Express, and who bludgeons audiences again this year with an adaptation of the old English epic, Beowulf.
I say this not because I actually saw the film in iMax 3-D, but because watching the story unfold it occurred to me how the fillmmaker's principal imperative was to string together a bunch of iconic images and action scenes, with character development and even story logic being secondary. I know this is an adaptation, but it is my understanding that the writers made certain interpretations of the text of the original poem that translate into liberties. As a I discuss the plot points, be advised that SPOILERS ABOUND.
The main players are all there, with Beowulf (voiced to gravelly perfection by Ray Winstone) arriving on the shores of Denmark to rid King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) of a monster, Grendel (Crispin Glover), who has slain many of his faithful subjects during a night of drunken debauchery. Quite simply, he gets the job done albeit in a rather unorthodox fashion by stripping naked and fighting the creature with nothing more than his bare hands, killing it by repeatedly punching what appears to be a cross-between its ear and its temple and then ripping its arm off, but not before Grendel is able to crawl home to his mother (Angelina Jolie) and tell her who killed him.
Enraged, the demon sorceress comes to Beowulf in a dream, disguised as Hrothgar's wife (Robin Wright Penn, in her first Zemeckis film since Forrest Gump) whom Beowulf has grown to fancy. When Beowulf awakes, he finds to his consternation that almost all of his men have been slain. Hrothgar informs him that Grendel's mother is responsible for the carnage, showing somewhat unusual knowledge about her which leads us to believe that it was, in fact, he who sired the creature.
Beowulf journey's to the creature's lair, only to find that she looks just like a naked Angelina Jolie, with the more sensitive parts obscured as she seduces him with not only her body but with promises of power and glory which Beowulf rather quickly swallows up. They end up having a one night stand, and her promises made to him of having his own kingdom, in exchange for giving her a son, come true after Hrothgar, who despite Beowulf's exclamations that he has slain her, divines the truth and then after declaring that "she is no longer my curse," kills himself.
Flash forward to what appears to be many, many years later, with Beowulf an aged and weary king, devoid of any purpose or happiness in life.
At one point, however, a crucial part of his bargain with Grendel's mother (who really doesn't go by any other name in the story) is broken, and suddenly, her vengeance, their son, descends upon Beowulf's kingdom. This time, rather than a grotesque humanoid monster, it is a dragon that seeks to destroy the kingdom. After a rather thrilling chase sequence which was, again, no doubt conceived for the benefit of 3D viewers, Beowulf performs an act of supreme self-sacrifice, which gruesomely involves self-mutilation through which he is able to slay the dragon by ripping out its heart. Having killed his own son, he has thus redeemed himself for his moment of weakness many years before.
Now, I would be a complete and utter liar if I didn't say I was rather unhappy with what happened next, considering it apparently wasn't the most literal interpretation of the poem's ending.
Essentially, Beowulf is given a hero's funeral, and suddenly, Grendel's mother, not only shows up, but then proceeds to tempt the man who has succeeded Beowulf as king, leaving the film somewhat open-ended.
The plot of both Hrothgar and Beowulf sleeping with Grendel's mother and siring children by her was apparently something added on by screenwriters Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, and to my mind it isn't a particularly welcome one, especially since storywise, the destruction of Beowulf's kingdom by the dragon becomes his fault, when it isn't even so in the poem. Beowulf's heroism in slaying the dragon is then diminished; in the poem he dies saving his kingdom from a dragon, but in the movie he dies cleaning up his own mess.
And worst of all, this little plot device, avowedly intended to bridge the gap of 50 years from the time Beowulf kills Grendel to the time he fights the dragon, does not service the story particularly well.
This movie still suffers from the affliction of Polar Express which felt like a string of illogical action sequences meant to keep 3D audiences enthralled and obviously character development is the main casualty. And to think, I didn't even get to see it in 3D.
My problems with the film are mostly thematic and story-related, and I really did love the visualization of the movie. The dragon chase sequence at the end is particularly awesome to behold.
Now that Zemeckis, with three moderately successful motion-capture movies under his belt (including last year's Monster House, which he produced but didn't direct), I think it's safe to say that Hollywood now has a new, viable way of telling stories that are a little too daunting, budget-wise, for live-action filming. While I wasn't particularly excited about these films, I now eagerly await the release of Steven Spielberg's and Peter Jackson's Tintin trilogy, which, it is said, will be made using this same technique.
Enchanted
directed by Kevin Lima
starring Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey and James Marsden
With the exception of The Little Mermaid, I am a huge fan of the Menken-era Disney musical. I loved the songs and the production numbers and in some cases their wonderful, tear jerker qualities.
While lately these films, and Disney films in general, have been thoroughly lampooned by the Shrek films (produced by ex-Disney honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg), Disney has, itself, decided to poke fun at some of its quainter storytelling conventions as well in the charming Enchanted.
Giselle (Adams) is a peasant girl dreaming of finding her prince charming. Prince Edward (Marsden), is a handsome prince with a penchant for taking down giants and ogres who is in search of a beautiful maiden to marry. They meet, fall in love, and decide to marry the next day.
This is the perfect setup for a Disney animated movie (and the first few minutes of the film are done in the traditional, hand-drawn style) and in true Disney tradition, the villain of the story, Edward's evil stepmother, the queen, steps into the picture, tricking Giselle and pushing her down a well (sort of) which is actually a magical portal to place where there are "no happily ever afters." That place just happens to be Manhattan, and it is at this point that the story ceases to be animated but instead takes place in live action.
Giselle, wandering through New York and thoroughly distraught and disoriented, then meets handsome but cynical divorce lawyer Robert Philips (Dempsey) who lives alone with his daughter. What follows is truly zany sequence of events, with Prince Edward jumping down the same "well" in pursuit of Giselle, with a chipmunk named Pip and a loyal manservant named Nathanael (Timothy Spall) in tow.
Of course, this is a love story, so it's pretty much a foregone conclusion who Giselle will fall in love with before the credits roll, but there are some wonderfully surprising character moments, such as when she gets fed up with Robert's cynicism and tells him so. There are a lot of wonderful little character insights, mostly to do with Giselle, that accompany her trip to happily ever after. And like any Disney movie, it's happily ever after for everyone, from Giselle and Robert, to Prince Edward and Robert's girlfriend Nancy (Idina Menzel of Rent, who apparently had a lovely song number with James Marsden that didn't make the final cut) and Nathanael. Of course, we all know what, in a Disney movie, happily ever after means for the villain...
Now, lampooning Disney cliches is nothing new and it was, quite frankly, done ad nauseam in three Shrek movies, but this movie doesn't quite beat the audience over the head with its tongue-in-cheek references. Rather, it pays homage to all of those creations of old, and transplants them, however absurdly, into the 'real world'. For example, the forest animals who help tidy up the cottage become a cadre of pigeons, rats, cockroaches and flies cleaning up Robert's apartment, all to the tune of an Alan Menken song! It's touches like this that set this movie apart from yet another would-be spoof.
Of course, the conceit would still have fallen flat on its face were it not for the conviction of Amy Adams' performance. To any extent, James Marsden as the literally and figuratively two-dimensional Prince Edward also adds a lot to the story's narrative pep, but this is wholly Adams' movie. Thank God Lima didn't go with Lindsay Lohan, who was whispered to have been considered for the part at one point.
The movie is just pure delight from start to finish, and not because there's anything particularly new or insightful about it, but that its execution is really magnificent. It's a deconstruction of the Disney musical without the toilet humor or blatant pop culture references. It's wonderful how, after years of being overshadowed by Dreamworks and their increasingly cookie-cutter computer generated cartoons, Disney has once again come out to show them the way creatively.
Not that the movie is without its flaws. For one thing, one unfortunate inevitability of a movie with characters as zany as Giselle and Prince Edward is that there has to be a 'straight man' to keep things on an even keel, and Dempsey plays Robert as straight as they come, largely because of a script that really doesn't give him anything to do but react to Giselle on one hand and be cynical on the other. Oh, and he's meant to look good in a suit for his legions of Grey's Anatomy fans. His character was somewhat condemned by, ironically enough, a Disney story convention, to not be very interesting, just like the princes Disney lampoons. I mean, at least James Marsden's Edward was laugh-out-loud funny. Idina Menzel is given an even more thankless role than Dempsey, and considering her song number was cut out one wonders why they even kept her character around. Also, I felt that both the cinematographer and makeup artist did Adams a true injustice; I remember seeing her only a year ago in Will Ferrell's Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and I distinctly remember that she looked pretty good there. Here, she looked disconcertingly old, and rather pallid. Fortunately, her performance transcends the shortcomings of the people who prepped and shot her scenes.
Flaws aside, though, and there are, mercifully, very few of them, this is easily one of the most enjoyable movies I've seen all year, and I heartily recommend it to whoever reads this.
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