The off-screen cast members seem uniformly thunderstruck by their woeful, two-dimensional counterparts. There isn’t a glint of life in that ham-fisted, thick-necked caricature, nor in his supporting cast of cheaply etched gods, goddesses, muses, mortals and satyrs. Hercules, an almost embarrassing set of cheap squiggles, barely qualifies as a drawing.
In "Hercules," ancient Thebes looks like a hastily sketched field-trip location from public TV’s "The Magic School Bus" and no self-respecting immortal would be seen dead in this simplistic rendition of Mount Olympus. The animation, designed by British illustrator Gerald Scarfe and executed by time-saving computer animation, is some of the worst I’ve ever cringed through, including the corner-cutting junk of Don Bluth movies and every trashy cartoon that passes for entertainment on Saturday morning television. Writer-directors Ron Clements and John Musker, who ushered in Disney’s great new era ("The Great Mouse Detective," "The Little Mermaid" and "Aladdin"), are now presiding over its downfall. Aided by his winged horse, Pegasus, and trained by Philoctetes (or "Phil") the satyr (Danny DeVito), Hercules takes on Hades and his arsenal of weapons, including a 30-headed Hydra and a two-faced, vaguely slutty beauty called Megara (or "Meg," played by Susan Egan), whose job is to discover Hercules’ weakness. But to prove himself worthy of returning to his celestial home, Hercules must show his heroism. Raised on Earth by mortals Amphitryon and Alcmene, Hercules (Tate Donovan) eventually learns of his connection to Zeus from the thunderous god himself.
#JAMES WOODS HADES HERCULES FULL#
But the goons don’t give him the full dose, which leaves Hercules potentially immortal. Hades, whose desire to rule the gods is threatened by Hercules’ destiny, orders two hellish lackeys (Bobcat Goldthwait and Matt Frewer) to administer a potion that will render the boy mortal. The heavenly child of Zeus (Rip Torn) and Hera (Samantha Eggar), he’s abducted from Mount Olympus by scheming Hades, lord of the underworld (James Woods, attempting to sound like a lovable sociopath). Our hero is a bionic, noble doofus with calves so big they look like bowling-pin implants. This is understandable, but in its place, the mouse factory has inserted narrative mush that’s ineptly conceived, woefully performed by the off-screen actors and badly animated. In the Disney movie, the dark material has been airbrushed out of existence.
One night on the heroic road, for instance, the Herkster rewarded one of his hosts by sleeping with all 50 of the old man’s daughters. There’s more: As a youngster, Hercules killed his music teacher, Linus, for reprimanding him (kids, don’t try this at school), and he tended to help himself to any damsel that crossed his path. So when the adult Hercules married Megara, the queen of Mount Olympus rendered him temporarily insane, causing him to slaughter his wife, three children and two of his nephews. When that failed (the kid strangled the snakes), Hera couldn’t rid herself of that yucky, vengeful feeling. Hera, Zeus’s betrayed wife, was so enraged, she sent serpents into baby Hercules’ crib. For starters, in classical mythology the Greek hero was the result of an illicit union between Zeus and a mortal, married woman called Alcmene. The story behind "Hercules," Walt Disney’s insipid, lifeless, animated feature, is hardly the stuff of children’s entertainment.
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