Maybe the marketers behind Stung didn’t even consider that using the tagline “The Ultimate Buzzkill” could come back to sting them in the ass — as in, “Stung is a real buzzkill.” Because it is.

A throwback to the big-bug invasion flicks of the 1950s, the first movie from director Benni Diez pits wasps against WASPs. A garden party to honor a deceased, well-to-do patriarch represents a do-or-die opportunity for the catering company owned by Julie (appealing newcomer Jessica Cook), having taken it over on the occasion of her own father’s death. On hand to help her is her one employee, the smart-mouthed Paul (Matt O’Leary, Sorority Row), who obviously carries a torch for her with more devotion than he carries buffet trays.

What should be a routine gig is ruined when a swarm of giant, mutated wasps zooms in and crashes the party. The insects have the wings; the humans haven’t got a prayer. And what should be a fun hour and a half just isn’t, falling as flat as a soufflé removed from the oven too early.

Everything seems to be stuck at the halfway mark for optimal conditions: its energy level, the jokes, characters for whom to root, creatures frightening enough to fear. (Committing to the practical route vs. relying on CGI to create critters would have taken care of the last point.) When you cast Aliens’ Lance Henriksen, yet his big moment consists of him ordering the wasps to “kiss my ass!,” an opportunity clearly has been wasted. As is, the film is watchable, barely. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

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.