Bae Wolf is clearly not meant to be taken seriously, but being painfully unfunny, it’s also impossible to take it lightly. It’s not enough to be irreverent, for even parody needs to be done well, and evidently no one involved in the making of this movie took any pride in their work; from the writing to the acting to the photography to the editing, it’s all shoddily and choppily put together.
The only person who did a good job here is the location scout, and even that backfires because the woods where Bae Wolf was shot would have lent themselves better to a serious treatmente of the material – which, even without the budget (which this movie obviously lacks), could have at least still had a sense of awe for the original source, as well as the conviction of belief (two qualities that can recently be found in the somewhat similar but comparatively quite superior Werewolf Castle).
Now, there is nothing wrong with putting a humorous spin on an ancient tale; go no farther than Monty Python, who hit back-to-back homeruns with Holy Grail and Life of Brian. So if you want to turn Beowulf into a comedy, by all means go ahead, but first make sure to write some jokes, why don’t you? I mean, the word “dude” stopped being funny in and of itself a long, long time ago, and that’s generously assuming that it ever was; putting it in the mouths of Danes from 500 AD does not by any stretch of the imagination give it a new lease on life.
