For the umpteenth time in as many years, the powers that be have blessed mankind with another telling of “Beowulf.” 

 Unfortunately, Antonio Banderas and Gerard Butler were too busy for respective sequels, so director Robert Zemeckis got low-balled into an obvious plan B: sweet animation, blood, guts and a naked Angelina Jolie—bummer.
Usually I’d use the following lines to review the plot, but if you’ve ever taken a literature class, or spent more than five minutes with Dr. Pamela Shaffer, you pretty much get the gist.
There’s a king, there’s a warrior, there’s a hall with a pissed off monster; the monster loses his arm, its mom seeks revenge and then Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks her in the face. 
OK, so I lied about that last part, but everything else is spot on. 
Zemeckis doesn’t tamper with the basic people and points; he just adds some twists of flavor.
For instance, after Grendel’s opening attack on Heorot, the hall, he returns to his lair and is confronted by his mother.
Although enraged by his actions, Grendel’s mother eventually backs off after her son reveals that he left Hrothgar untouched which fills the air with the rancid aroma of foreshadowing.
Viewers are clued into and later introduced to a romantic history between the king and the killer beauty.
In the original poem, the unsightly Grendel seems to be the hero’s primary antagonist; mom, also a victim from a long fall down the ugly tree, makes a quick appearance at the end.
But this version paints her as the primary villain and grants her the sensual seduction powers—very nice—to make it work.
The whole idea is so far fetched, I couldn’t even pass it as B.S. on an exam, but it’s pretty intriguing.
Furthermore, some of the action sequences, like the notorious yet traditionally unadorned arm-rip scene, were taken to an entirely new level of gore via animation.
 Zemeckis, as the first teller in the story’s millennial history to add raunchy blood splatters, deserves an award.
Minor spurts of gore made brawl scenes more climactic, at least to my teenager side.
All in all, Zemeckis makes sense of Beowulf.
For a story that is clearly overdone, the people behind the scenes filled in some holes and watered just enough dry spots to hold attention.
 Its adaptations allow it to bloom more than any previous rendition—except for Topher Rome’s version.