Here’s how little I understood Beowulf when I had to read it in English class in junior high and again in high school: I thought the title referred to the monster, and that the monster was a wolf. Laugh all you want, but Anglo-Saxon epic poems of the 8th century are not the easiest things to decipher.

Luckily, Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf is different, and I don’t just mean because it’s animated. The film marks his “no-bullshit” version of the classic text, as he promises on the making-of documentary featured on the DVD: “This has nothing to do with the Beowulf you were forced to read in junior high school. It’s all about eating, drinking, killing and fornicating.”

Actually, as scripted by novelist Neil Gaiman (The Sandman) and Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary, the movie doesn’t stray all that far from the story of its source. It’s just that it ditches much of the boring elements and amps up the saucy ones, leaving an action-oriented, sometimes ribald and unapologetically over-the-top experience. Should Beowulf really be shown punching his way out of sea monster by going through the eye? Sure, why the hell not?

Getting a CGI slimdown in the process, The Departed heavy Ray Winstone assumes the lead role of Beowulf, a hero — here, made flawed, in direct opposition to the poem — who arrives at the castle of King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins, Thor) to slay the monster Grendel (Crispin Glover, apparently having put his Back to the Future beef with Zemeckis behind him), a giant deformed beast from a nearby village who doesn’t like all the noise their merriment makes.

Beowulf agrees, Grendel attacks and — while stark naked and opting to use no sword — our hero slays the creature. That doesn’t sit well with his serpentine mother, who takes the form of Angelina Jolie (Maleficent), whose breastastic reveal sent the tongues of internet bloggers a-wagging when the scene was leaked just prior to its theatrical release. She offers Beowulf a truce: He can say he killed her if he promises to leave her be. Because she looks like a nude Jolie, he agrees.

Women are known to change their minds, however, which results in Beowulf having to engage in the fight of his life with an enormous, fire-breathing dragon. Like much of the movie, this sequence is a thrill to watch. Even when the narrative lags — and at nearly two hours, it does here and there — the visuals are something to behold. While I’ve never been a fan of motion-capture animation, Beowulf represents a huge leap for the medium; it’s difficult to imagine even a whiz-kid director like Zemeckis being able to make it work in the traditional format of live-action. Laden as his film is with violence, gore and nudity, it makes the ages-old story more exciting and accessible (Seamus Heaney or no Seamus Heaney) than it ever has been, or could ever hope to be. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.