It is Denmark, 507 A.D., Eastern Standard Time. Fearless warrior Beowulf steps forth from a howling tempest to rescue King Hrothgar and his pulchritudinous queen from Grendel, a drooling, pus-filled monster with lousy teeth and disposition.

Weapons are useless against this thing, so Beowulf strips down and -- in an epic form of naked studio wrestling -- rips off Grendel's arm. The crybaby bully limps home to his mother, who seeks revenge by re-attacking the melancholy Danes and trying to seduce, rather than fight, Beowulf as she did Hrothgar in days of yore.

I'm trying to remember my own days of yore -- namely, the Jesuits' lectures on "Beowulf" in sophomore English class. Europe's first great vernacular heroic poem was the highest achievement of Old English literature, composed circa 750 A.D. In director Robert Zemeckis' animated fantasy rendering, King Hrothgar and his kingdom are ravaged by the nightly visits of Grendel -- and even more so by his hag of a mum.

---

Beowulf'

• Voices of: Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn
• Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence including disturbing images, some sexual material and nudity.
• Web site: beowulfmovie.com/

---

Yeah, well ... Woody Allen's advice to Diane Keaton in "Annie Hall" ("Just don't take any class where you have to read 'Beowulf' ") retains a certain wisdom. To counter it, Zemeckis and his writer team of graphic novelist Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary employ the highest-tech 21st-century technology to turn the problematic poem into a piece of pop culture.

Ray Winstone voices Beowulf, adequately enough. Robin Wright Penn voices the queen and favors us with a song. Anthony Hopkins as Hrothgar says, "Our [long national] nightmare is over," a la Gerald Ford after Nixon's resignation. Angelina Jolie (Grendel's mother) voices a campy temptress with devil's tail and high heels.

The violence and male and female near-nudity are as racy as a PG-13 rating will allow, accommodating Jolie's computer-generated breasts. Neither she nor Winstone's character is anatomically correct, of course. Like Barbie and Ken, there's a lot of waxing involved.

"Beowulf" is having the largest 3-D release of any film yet made, and its "performance capture" animation team digitally enhances the fast-paced action to good effect. This was my maiden voyage to the Pittsburgh Mills IMAX theater, and I enjoyed it. The rushing rats, the objects hurtling straight toward you, the monster's tentacles extending right out of the seat next to you -- such nifty phenomena of depth perception are literally in-your-face. But 3-D hasn't really improved that much in 2007 from 1957.

Neither has the Teutonic code of loyalty to tribe and vengeance against enemies (slightly modified with proto-Christian trappings) on which "Beowulf" is based.

"Do we need this new Christian god?" someone asks.

"No, what we need is a hero!" comes the pragmatic reply.

We get him in "Beowulf," but I doubt that he and the experience are worth the effort in plain old two vs. three dimensions.