For starters: movie versus real Beowulf poem. Honestly, only about 15 minutes of the film were actually similar to the poem in any way. Except for the names of characters and a very vague general theme, the movie butchered the poem completely. Or maybe the director Sturla Gunnarsson simply decided that the poem was too boring and that it needed some extra spice, and thus, for example, he added a totally unnecessary and out-of-place romantic episode between Beowulf and some random girl.

Let's start from the beginning. The film commences with a bizarre family bonding scene between a child Grendel and his father. (While reading the poem, did the director ever notice the fact that Grendel was "fatherless"? Seems not.) Grendel's father, a pretty normal looking guy except for being seven feet tall and kind of scraggly, is tragically murdered by king Hrothgar. Little Grendel, a cute kid with a fuzzy blond beard, is spared by the king, but he still swears to enact revenge on his father's killers. He then chops off his father's head and goes to live in the cave.

Many years later Hrothgar builds his mighty mead hall, Heorot, and there's actually a quite nice recreation of a pagan ritual where a druid blesses the hall with sheep's blood. It looked pretty realistic and authentic, but it didn't help the fact the Hrothgar has dyed red hair with blond roots showing. Then, predictably, Grendel kills everyone in the hall, Hrothgar becomes depressed, and it's time for the mighty Beowulf to show up.

From there on, everything rapidly goes downhill. Beowulf first appears swimming somewhere in the middle of ocean (maybe this was an allusion to the original tale in the poem when Beowulf and his friend Breca have a swimming contest), he washes up somewhere on shore and for a moment I wondered "how in the world did he end up in Scotland?", because both Beowulf and some random fisherman had atrocious Scottish accents which really don't help with the illusion that they really should be Vikings. Then he hears about Grendel, goes to Denmark, chases Grendel all over the place, fall in love with a witty redhead witch (who, with her American-English voice, nicely contrasts Beowulf's Scottish accent), kills Grendel, kills Grendel's mother, and sails away to Geatland. The end.

Rather than recount the ridiculous plot of the story, I'd prefer to discuss the main points that I disliked, and a few points that I actually did like.

Of the whole film I disliked the characters most of all (or, I should rather say, I disliked the actors). They seemed to me almost like parodies of the characters in the poem. Hrothgar was a cowardly, pathetic, slobbering, alcoholic old man. At one point he was even willing to accept Jesus Christ with the help of a crazy Christian priest named Brendan, who is prone to seizures and who froths at the mouth like a rabid dog. I hoped Hrothgar would be very well portrayed by such a good actor as Stellan Skarsgard, who, since his role in King Arthur, in my mind has been the archetypal Viking warlord. But, unfortunately, he was terrible in Beowulf and Grendel.

The hero Beowulf, although handsome enough, seemed confused, with conflicting emotions and a bad temper. Selma, the witch, doesn't count at all, because she is not a valid character and her only use was to provide Beowulf with a love-interest and someone to answer all his questions.

How about Grendel? Surprisingly enough, he was the one character in the movie that I liked. The director broke all dogma by making Grendel into a real human being. Slightly monstrous because of his size, lack of speech and brutality, but clearly human nonetheless. Grendel is called by the other characters a "troll" just because they misunderstand him. He's not like everyone else, so, automatically he's a monster. Personally, I really felt for Grendel. All of his actions were motivated by some wrong done to him and even Beowulf himself noticed that Grendel is displaying a humanlike personality by only killing warriors, but never women, children, or old men. He doesn’t even attack Beowulf and his Geat warriors, because, as Beowulf says, he has no personal vendetta against them. The only one he wants to kill, or at least hurt, is Hrothgar. This would be his revenge for Hrothgar killing Grendel's father, which happened for no better reason then the fact that their paths once crossed.

Near the end of the film, when Grendel finally confronts Beowulf, in self-defense he beats up all the warriors, but deliberately kills only the man who, when the Geats were visiting Grendel's cave-home, destroyed Grendel's father's skull. This shows that Grendel does not kill in cold blood, and that he has reasons for all his actions. In fact, Grendel is so human in this film, that he actually begets a child by Selma the witch. Although this scene was never in the original poem, it still helped create the image of Grendel as a poor, misunderstood, human being. When Grendel finally dies, there was a quite lyrical scene when he floats away in the sea. (In this film, the sea replaces the murky lake where Grendel lived) Finally, at the very end of the movie, Beowulf feels regret for killing Grendel and honors him by building a cairn by the sea side.

As for Grendel's mother, the Sea-Hag, her role was so small, that it's barely worth mentioning. For the first half of the movie we only see her fleeting shape underwater and her clammy hand grabbing at Beowulf and his warriors as they sail the sea in their boat. Then, towards the end of the film, she appears as an ugly hag with long white hair and powerful claws. She manages to rescue her son's hand, but soon afterwards Beowulf kills her with one stroke of a sword. Her appearance did nothing more then give Beowulf one more chance to show off his battle skills, since the entire movie mostly consists of Beowulf running around in circles looking for Grendel and there are almost no good battle scenes.

As for the rest of the film, there are countless other small details that added up to make the film as bad as it is. For example, I nearly died of laughter when all the characters in the film decided to use modern swear words. Hrothgar has a hilarious scene where he says the priceless line: "don't sour me with why a f*ing troll does what a f*ing troll does." This in itself entirely ruined the historical authenticity of the film. I don't doubt that the Vikings did swear, but surely not in the way that Beowulf and Grendel tried to show. Also, the costumes were strange. Grendel was dressed in a ridiculous outfit that looked like an extra from Conan the Barbarian and just screamed "barbarian cliché," and the pagan druids wore round fur hats that are usually traditionally worn by Hassidic Jews, not Vikings.

The only scene that was closely associated with the original poem was Beowulf's "formal boast" at the welcoming feast. Also, at the very end of the movie, Thorkel, a scop, remarks that Grendel bore the "Mark of Cain," which is a direct reference to the poem, where Grendel and his mother are said to be of "Cain's clan." And finally, at one point, I noticed that something similar to a kenning for "king" was used by one of the Geat warriors: "shield-king."

All in all, Beowulf and Grendel is fun time-waster movie and it has enough elements to entertain a low-I.Q. audience. Violence? Check. Romance? Check. Profanity? Check. Quality and artistic integrity and educational value? Zero. All I can say is that it should only be watched after reading the poem, so that the movie wouldn't be taken seriously or accepted as a decent cinematic retelling of such a great work of poetic literature as the real Beowulf.