Movie Reviews: Nordic Numbskullery!

OK, don't judge me (too much, anyway)!  It's exam time on campus, and I have to grade a mountain of tests and papers.  I can't work in silence, so usually I have a movie playing on the TV.  I might start off with respectable films (this time it was "Glory" for starters and then "The Conspirator" to go along with the Civil War vibe), but as exam time drags on and my brain begins to implode, I find that it's only a matter of time before I decide that watching absolute garbage is a great idea.  

Well, at least it's entertaining!  I mean, really, it's hilarious in the laugh-out-loud "Are you freaking kidding me?!"  kind of way.  So brace yourselves, my darlings, because I'm about to review two truly craptastic movies that nevertheless kept me awake as I graded and studied in the wee hours. Let's start with the lesser of two evils, shall we?

Monster mash.

Say this phrase out loud: "Vikings versus Predator."  Say it again with feeling: "VIKINGS VERSUS PREDATOR!"  Got that?  Do I really have to go on?  Mashup mania!

Seriously, though, if you don't expect anything great from this 2008 genre flick, then you might really have a good time watching the madness unfold with all the tropes and conventions that you'd expect.  So what if you can see what's going to happen?  The fun is the rip-roaring silliness of it all, enacted for you by a cast that has some familiar faces in it -- John Hurt (lately Ollivander from "Harry Potter"), Sophia Myles (she's been in everything from "Moonlight" to "Underworld"), and Jim Caviezel (currently of "Person of Interest" and someone I've enjoyed watching ever since "Frequency").  Actually, I was kind of surprised that Caviezel took on this nutty project, but I'm glad he did ... because I had a great time watching it.  Mind you, this isn't a suggestion that you go out and watch this too, because this movie is craptacular!  But it was FUN!  At 2 AM when you're up to your eyeballs in freshman papers, watching Caviezel and a bunch of rowdy Vikings (Ron Perlman in a cameo!) mix it up with a nasty, glowing, man-eating alien beastie is just pure entertainment.

The premise of this flick, by the way, is that Caviezel is Kainan, a soldier from an advanced space empire whose spaceship crash-lands on Earth.  The snag is that it's Earth in the Middle Ages and smack in the middle of Viking territory, along with the inconvenience that inside Caviezel's ship was a Moorwen, that alien beastie with a bad temper and a taste for human flesh.  Now the darn thing's on the loose and on a killing spree.  (BAD DOG!  MOORWEN!)  Oh, don't think about any of this too much.  Sit back, relax, and watch the thing roll on in all its colorful craziness.  The special effects aren't bad, and the production values are pretty good.  Bonus: the use of names that you are sure to recognize if you're a fan of this sort of thing: there are people called Unferth!  Freya!  Rothgar!  There's even a Boromir -- no, really! -- a fact that nearly had me choking with laughter on my coffee.

"Outlander" is rated R. There's a shipload of good old-fashioned bloody monster violence, though there's only one f-bomb -- and the context of it is simply hilarious.  This entire movie is preposterous right down to the end, but that's no reason why it can't be a lot of fun too.  You know, now that I'm thinking about it, I kind of love it in all its cheesiness.  I watched it twice in a row and would totally watch it again.  How many hilariously awful Viking movies can you name that are worth watching, anyway?  Not many.  Which brings us to the second movie.

Yo Mama Joke.

If "Outlander" was "Vikings versus Predator," then this one is "Polar Express Meets High School English Class; Train Wreck Results."  This 2007 mess of CGI is a total disaster of storytelling that will have you rolling your eyes until you get a headache.  I won't even try.  I will say, though, that from Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother to a CGI'd-beyond-recognition Ray Winstone as Beowulf, the visuals in this thing aren't so much amazing as they are creepy when they're not demented.  I'm talking about Beowulf running around Heorot Hall in his birthday suit, his unsettling erotic dream, and Mommy Grendel strutting around on feet that behave like stiletto heels.  Come on, man!  Vampy Mommy Grendel is both laughable and horrific at the same time ... and what the hell is wrong with all these Nordic kingly types that their first response to seeing this swampy she-monster is apparently to think, "Hey, I'd hit that"?  Call it creative license, perhaps, because I'm pretty sure that wasn't in the Old English poem!  Somehow this flick got away with being rated only PG-13 despite creepifying sexuality and disgusting monster action.  The worst of it, though, is that none of it was really any FUN.  *MM blows raspberries and throws popcorn at the screen.*