I think the first 40 lines in the movie are "bring me mead." The movie opens with hard-partying Danes in a great Viking hall administered by the besotted King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins), where rugged men sing bawdy songs and wenches clean and serve.
Suddenly terror strikes - King Hrothgar's garment slips from his otherwise nude frame, nearly exposing Hopkins' junk. This is, believe it or not, the first of many such jokes, apparently inserted by animators road-testing Hrothgar's legendary mead.
I bring this up because parents should know that "Beowulf" sits at the crossroads of Christian and pagan culture, and this version revels in its pagan roots.
The actual terror arrives in the form of Grendel, a cursed creature of the earth - depicted here as a huge, deformed, screaming child, composed of exposed sinew and skull, with a distended eardrum that causes him to go nuts at the sound of music or singing.
Grendel slays many warriors, prompting Hrothgar to issue a call for heroes brave enough to fight Grendel. Mighty warrior Beowulf answers the call and immediately proves his bravery by stripping naked (the Danish women stare and gasp) to await Grendel, a beast that cannot be killed by any man-made weapon.
Their smackdown is straight out of "Austin Powers." Beowulf runs the rafters and swings from ropes, but his manhood is always obscured by an object in the foreground. It's typical of the strange way Zemeckis mixes moments of high drama with low comedy.
As dictated by the poem, Beowulf defeats Grendel, whereupon he learns that he has only reached the semifinals. Grendel has an angry mother, the last of the hideous creatures of the earth.
