Review: Hercules (1997)
Steve Rhodes
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HERCULES
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1997 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
It is no wonder that the Disney executives are scratching their
collectives heads over the disappointing performance of their big
animated movie of the summer. Whereas their last two and much more
financially successful summer movies, POCAHONTAS and THE HUNCHBACK OF
NOTRE DAME, featured unlikely cartoon heroes, their latest has a star
straight from central casting.
Since we live in an age of superheroes and action figures, what
better place to look for material than the gods of Greek mythology?
And what better choice for the protagonist than that guy with bulging
pecs, Hercules? Surely, the executives must have reasoned, the kids
will flock to HERCULES in droves and come back to see it again and
again.
Why this has not transpired as anticipated is unclear. Perhaps
there is something lacking in the implementation of the idea, but more
likely it has to do with the picture's competition and with the
obsession of this summer's audiences for the action blockbuster of the
week. For whatever reason, the film is much better than its box office
receipts indicate, and worth a visit if you have not seen it yet.
Like most Disney movies, the script by John Musker, Ron Clements,
Bob Shaw, Don McEnery and Irene Mecchi, plays fast and loose with the
traditional story so as to extract the maximum number of laughs and to
pack a lot of mythology into an hour and a half. Except for classical
scholars, the rest of us will happily accept the results.
In Disney's version of the story, Hades, voiced with great glee
and energy by James Woods, plans a "hostile takeover " of Mount
Olympus. Hades is told that only Hercules will be able to defeat him
so he tries to makes baby Hercules mortal, but through a slip-up, a
small portion of his deity remains, leaving him with the strength of
the gods.
Hercules, as voiced by Tate Donovan and as drawn by British
illustrator Gerald Scarfe, is arguably not the most interesting
character in the film. Much better is Hades, and even better still is
Meg (Megara), voice by Susan Egan. ("My friends call me Meg, that is
if I had any friends.") Meg, Hercules's girlfriend and Hades's human
trap to try to bring Hercules down, is played with sassy and mocking
humor. Meg's confidence and smart mouth makes many good lines come off
like jewels. She keeps taunting Hercules by referring to him only as
"wonderboy."
Hercules and some of the other characters are drawn with strange
and awkward proportions, especially the feet. Hercules's, in
particular, are half again too large. Gerald Scarfe's drawing style
becomes one of the movie's low points. On the other hand, some, Meg
and Hades being two, are drawn strikingly well. Hades has red or blue
fire shooting out of his head depending on his mood, and Meg has
provocative bangs and a slightly revealing gown.
As Hercules grows up, his nickname is Jerkules because of his
clumsiness. Through the help of a little satyr named Phil
(Philoctetes), played with his usual style of humor by Danny DeVito,
Hercules trains to become a superhero. Hercules has been promised by
his father Zeus (voice by Rip Torn) that if he proves himself a true
hero, he can become a god again.
As in most Disney creations, comical sidekicks abound. Hercules
rides on Pegasus, "a magnificent horse with the brain of a bird."
Hades has two bumbling assistants, Pain (voice by Bobcat Goldthwait)
and Panic (voice by Matt Frewer). Someone goes to the underworld, when
one of The Fates (voices by Amanda Plummer, Carole Shelley, and Paddi
Edwards) cut their soul's string.
The show has many good musical numbers with the best songs by a
group of black soul singers called The Muses (voices by Lillias White,
LaChanze, Cheryl Freeman, Roz Ryan, and Vaneese Thomas), who come off
of a Greek vase.
The best jokes, and the film needs even more, come from its
self-deprecating humor. Once Hercules become famous, his action
figures are sold everywhere and his image adorns everything including a
fast-food cup in the shape of a pillar. There are even fancy Hercules
Stores and AirHerc sandals.
Hercules reasons with his father that he is ready for divinity.
"I'm the most famous person in all Greece," he brags. "I'm an action
figure!" But Zeus demands more from his son and gets it.
After many battles, the best being the well choreographed
destruction of the almost unstoppable Hydra, Hercules does return to
his place in the clouds.
In the press kit, conveniently on CD-ROM these days, the
filmmakers say one of their main goals was to make the story
"accessible." They succeeded admirably and delightfully. More
families should skip one of those homogenous action flicks one week and
see HERCULES instead. That way they could laugh with the film rather
than at it.
HERCULES runs just 1:30. It is correctly rated G and is fine for
all ages. My son Jeffrey, age 8, and his friend Alan, also 8, both
thought the movie was "really good." They both said they liked it much
better than THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME and even better than THE LION
KING. As they left the theater, they were busy ticking off their
favorite monsters from the movie. I recommend the picture to you and
your whole family and give it ***.
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**** = A must see film.
*** = Excellent show. Look for it.
** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable.
* = Poor show. Don't waste your money.
0 = Totally and painfully unbearable picture.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: July 19, 1997
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
Steve Kong
HERCULES (1997)
A film review by Steve Kong
Copyright 1997 Steve Kong
I've skipped the last two Disney animated films because of a lack of
motivation to see them. And I would have missed Hercules also if it were
not for the fact that the guys who did Aladdin are the ones who made Hercules.
Hercules starts off well; I never thought that Greek mythology could be set
to gospel soul music. The story of Hercules is not true to the myth, but
it is entertaining enough that one can put that aside. And the kids
wouldn't know the difference. In Hercules, Zeus (Rip Torn) and Hera
(Samantha Eggar) have a little child, Hercules (Tate Donovan). Because of
a prediction that Hercules will stop evil Hades' (James Woods) plan to take
over Mount Olympus and the world, one night Hercules is taken away from
Mount Olympus by helpers of Hades. The two helpers, Pain (Bob Goldthwait)
and Panic (Matt Frewer) take Little Hercules to Earth and feed him formula
to make him a mere mortal. But, they don't feed him all of it, by
accident, and Hercules becomes a mortal who retains hid godly power.
Hercules is raised by a couple who discover him after Pain and Panic
abandon him. As a teen Hercules gets outcast because of his amazing
strength and clumsiness. He discovers that he is the son of Zeus after
becoming depressed. He wants to be a god and join his father on Mount
Olympus. In order for this though he needs to be a hero. On his quest to
be a hero, he meets Meg (Susan Egan), a strong self-reliant woman, for whom
he falls in love with. But, Meg has other motives, at least that's how it
seems.
Hercules is an above average Disney film. It does not rise above Disney's
earlier films, Aladdin, Lion King, or Beauty and The Beast. For me the
biggest thing that defines an animate Disney film is the music. And though
some of the music is highly entertaining, none of it is memorable. The
soundtrack to the film, by Alan Menken is just plain boring and uninteresting.
The film itself moves along quickly, and takes chances in places. It
takes, for instance, the chance to poke fun at the merchandising blitz that
Disney films create. The animation is well done; I especially enjoyed the
animation for Hades and the (computer generated) multi-headed beast that
Hercules battles.
The person who seems to be having the most fun is James Woods as Hades.
His Woods is all over the places and comes close to Robin Williams as the
Genie in Aladdin. Woods does don't hold back, and is one of two people in
Hercules that is memorable. Susan Egan as Meg also memorable. Her strong
and sexy Meg is pure entertainment. She is the exact opposite of being the
typical damsel-in-distress.
Hercules is an entertaining but flawed film. If you'r a parent and have
children wanting to go see it in the theatres, you don't need to worry,
Hercules is entertaining on two levels. You won't be bored. I am
recommending Hercules but not with too much conviction, there and better
animated Disney films.
--
steve kong
boi...@earthlink.net
spy on me at: http://mookie.relay.net/mookie/steve-cam.html
movie reviews: http://hardboiled.home.ml.org/
Andrew Hicks
HERCULES
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1997 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
(1997) *** (out of four)
HERCULES is the first animated Disney film in a long
time that doesn't seem like it came from Disney. It's entertaining,
yes, and has the usual Disney trappings -- a story, adapted from
classic literature, about stumbling hero who strikes it big, has a cute
animal sidekick and a beautiful cartoon woman, but has to fight a
very-evil villain with a cute animal sidekick of his own -- but it's got
the cheap laughs of a Warner Bros. effort. It's more SPACE JAM
than HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME.
Visually, HERCULES is on the Warner Bros. level, or
maybe half a notch above the Disney afternoon cartoon shows.
Its characters all look like caricatures and the backgrounds are
generally unimpressive, but there are a few beautifully-animated
scenes, all of which seem to take place in the evil underworld. The
other scenes are pretty autopilot, which makes me wonder where
Disney's priorities lie. Maybe these people _are_ as aligned with the
devil as folks at the American Family Association say.
I've pretty much forgotten all the Greek mythology stuff I
learned in freshman English, so forgive me if I don't rattle off the
names of the gods with the greatest of ease. I remember Hades,
Hermes, Herpes, Sneezy and Doc, and at the head of it all -- the
gods of the gods -- are Zeus and Hera. They have a baby at the
beginning and name him (what else?) Hercules. Zeus gives him a
playpen companion, a winged horse baby named Pegasus. I'm all for
pets but a baby and a horse sleeping together is a little odd, even for
mythology.
Things are peaceful on Mount Olympus, but as we all
know, when a baby is born in the Disney world, there's a villain
there to sabotage. This time it's Hades, lord of the underworld, who
is so evil he has blue fire for hair. Voiced by James Woods, Hades is
one of the best things about this movie, an enemy worthy of Disney.
His two cute animal sidekicks, Pain and Panic (voices of Bobcat
Goldthwait and Matt Frewer, both of whom needed the paycheck),
can change themselves into whatever form they wish.
Old Hades kidnaps Hercules and strips him of his god
status, but since he didn't drink all the evil potion, he still has the
strength of a god. So he's trapped on earth, raised by an elderly
couple who think he fell from heaven, just like Superman. There are
a couple unintentionally amusing scenes that follow, where we see
a 12-year-old Hercules called Jercules by his insensitive peers, who
just can't accept that he's different. Ever wonder what it's like to
wander the world, knowing you're a god, and not having anyone
believe you? By the way, Shirley MacLaine, that's a rhetorical
question...
Hercules grows up and finds out he can't return to the table
of the gods until he proves himself a true hero, which is cartoon
code for "the end of the movie." That means he has to save the world
from centaurs, giants, Limbaughs and all sorts of mythological
beasts with the aid of his half-goat personal trainer (voice of Danny
DeVito). There's also the femme fatale, Meg, who tries not to fall in
love with Herc but can't resist.
HERCULES is good fun, but it's definitely one of the lesser
movies of the Disney revolution that began with THE LITTLE
MERMAID. It's the only one besides POCAHONTAS in which the
attempts at drama fall completely flat, leaving only the surface-level
jokes and songs to entertain. You get the feeling the Disney people
are reaching with a lot of that present-past humor too -- once
Hercules becomes a hero, all the cool Athens kids are wearing
Air-Herc shoes. Flintstones, meet the Flintstones...
--
Visit the Movie Critic at LARGE homepage at
http://www.missouri.edu/~c667778/movies.html
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Marty Mapes
Hercules
A film review by Marty Mapes
Copyright 1997 Marty Mapes
**1/2 (out of 4) I skipped the last two Disney features because I
thought they looked exactly like the previous four - beautiful
adolescent heroes, nonbeautiful comic-relief sidekicks, simplistic
morality, and a song here and there.
Looks like I should have skipped this one too.
If you have kids and feel obligated to see this movie, go right ahead.
It is a clone of all the Disney features since THE LITTLE MERMAID. You
know exactly what you're getting into. If you're like me - looking for
something original or fresh, then you can probably skip this one.
The story is a Disneyfied version of Hercules. Lots of the details are
wrong (see http://net.indra.com/~mmapes/her_gz97.htm), but the basic
story is about right. Hercules is the mortal son of Zeus, but he has the
strength of a god. Brave Herc decides to become a hero and sets out to
prove himself by fighting all sorts of nasty monsters. Eventually, he
gains the notice of a jealous god (Hades, not Hera) whom he must later
confront. This being Disney, there is of course a love interest, Megara.
As usual, the only character that's not white bread with mayo is the
villain. James Woods steals the show as a very show-businesslike CEO of
the underworld, complete with flaming blue hair.
Of the songs, two stand out: one because it's bad, the other because
it's good. "Go the Distance" is a thankfully short gaggy schmaltzy
you-can-do-anything number, and "Zero to Hero" accompanies a packed
montage of heroic feats and mythological references that actually might
merit a second viewing. Parents who feel obligated to buy every Disney
movie shouldn't mind seeing that sequecne the first 15 times. There's
probably a lot there.
One final note deserves mentioning; the credits zoom by at an unusually
high speed. Most people walk out during the credits anyway, so the crawl
speed really shouldn't matter. Nevertheless, the credits rocket upwards
insultingly fast. A lot of people worked very hard to produce HERCULES,
and they deserve better.
(c) 1997 Marty Mapes
Check out more current movie reviews at http://www.indra.com/~mmapes/