An adaptaion of classic English literature? Well, not really. Screenwriters Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary have put a modern spin on Beowulf, taking the Old English epic poem -- by accounts a straightforward song of a hero and his battles -- and giving it a connected narrative arc. They've also woven in themes about the relation between outward glory and inward shame, and about the cyclical nature of the rise and fall of heroic men. They've made one major change  (involving the character of Grendel's Mother) to get all this to work, and, somewhat surprisingly, it works pretty well. The movie becomes an action-fantasy film, a story about battling trolls and dragons injected with an element of human conscience and regret.

Where Beowulf gets weird, though, involves its presentation. This is where director Robert Zemeckis steps in. He seems compelled to lead the motion-captured animated movie revolution, following up The Polar Express with a movie which makes very clear its desire to create animation that looks as hyper-realistic as possible. Although Beowulf is a fully animated movie, we seem asked to believe that the actors in it are not cartoons. Each character's physical performance was motion-captured, and even the likenesses of their faces are used.

Thus, when animated King Hrothgar comes into the room, he actually looks like Anthony Hopkins. And his queen Wealthow bears quite a resemblance to Robin Wright Penn. And yes, that's Angelina Jolie's face on the just-nude-enough-to-still-be-PG-13 body of Grendel's Mother. Only Beowulf himself, for some reason, doesn't look quite like the guy who's playing him, Ray Winstone, though one might say he looks like a a thinner-faced version.

 At this point, one must ask: why is this film animated? I raised that question before, when I reviewed The Polar Express, but I ask it again now, especially since 300 shows us a strong example of how a similar "living comic book" effect can be achieved using real actors against a computer-generated background. There are a few cinematic decisions to justify Zemeckis's route, including being able to take advantage of a non-rooted free-flying camera to create views from within spaces that would be very tough for a real camera to travel through. Also, he's able to age the characters over a long period of time in a way that feels more natural than with some instances of using makeup. But frankly, someone could easily counter these reasons by bringing up The Lord of the Rings movies, which featured a wholly convincing mix of dynamic live-action and c.g.

In any case, if we're talking about animated characters trying to look real, we can't avoid also discussing the effect of the Uncanny Valley, where the more real something appears to be, the more we notice what's not real about it. I think things look better here than from what I remember of The Polar Express, but, despite efforts to recreate hair and skin textures, the characters still feel a bit like they're made of plastic. And I notice more now that their eyes tend to glaze over, as if they're staring into space or looking off to the side at nothing in particular. I watched certain scenes featuring facial close-ups just waiting for someone's eyes to move, and when they did the effect was somewhat jarring.

I'm an advocate of using animation to create caricatures, because so much expressiveness and artistry can be found in exaggerated figures (for a prime example, see this year's Ratatouille). Why take the time to draw or render characters if you're just going to try to make them look real? We aren't painting portraits here. Yet, despite my broken-record misgivings, I confess to enjoying Beowulf. Credit Gaiman and Avary for their ability to iron out the story in a cinematic fashion, and Zemeckis for making the action sequences palpably thrilling. Of course, I suppose having screened it in IMAX 3-D helped too -- it's obvious Zemeckis meant it to be viewed in that format. Still, I believe if the characters' looks were given more room for artistic, unrealistic interpretation, the movie quite possibly could've been a home run.

(Released by Paramount and rated "PG-13" for intense sequences of violence including disturbing images, some sexual material and nudity.)

Review also posted at www.windotothemovies.com.