Hercules 1997

[6.1/10] If you pull back from Disney’s Hercules, it’s remarkable how solid the characters’ arcs and motivations are. Hercules wants to become a “true hero” in the hopes that it will help take him to “somewhere he belongs”, i.e. Mount Olympus. Phil wants to train a hero who the world looks up to, who can “go the distance” and earn him some plaudits by association. And Meg wants to be finished with men and the idea that they can be worthy of your self-sacrifice.

At the midway point of the movie, Hercules has performed great feats and become rich and famous, but laments that it hasn’t made him worthy of regaining his godhood and with it the sense of belonging he seeks. Phil storms off thinking that Hercules is just another failed project. And Meg is starting to believe in Hercules right when Hades wants to use her wiles against him.

Then, by the end, Hercules discovers that true heroism means self-sacrifice and strength of the heart (hello Star Trek: Enterprise fans!), rather than the great deeds, fame, and fortune that he associates with heroism. He also realizes that where he belongs is with the person he loves on Earth, not on Mount Olympus. Phil gets to see his champion in the stars, replete with a “Hey, that’s Phil’s boy!” And despite her cynicism, Meg finds someone worthy of risking her life and soul and freedom for.

That’s all solid storytelling and sturdy character work. There’s good (if trite) themes there about what genuinely makes someone a hero and what belonging really means. There’s enough twists in the narrative to make elements of Herc’s story play like a subversion, albeit a pretty basic one. There’s even enough basic but firmly present story beats to transition from one part of the narrative to another.

The problem is that despite those arcs working out on paper, none of them really lands in the movie itself. Hercules just moves too damn fast for anything to impact the audience. While the major points are covered in the film, those transitions happen so quickly, the major developments occurring in rushed montages, that the shift from one important character moment to the next feels almost meaningless.

In short, we don’t get to spend any major amount of time with the characters at any given stage of their journey until they’re off to the next one. That makes each twist in the narrative seem glancing, makes the characters feel thin, and makes the overall journey for everyone play as weightless. The skeleton of this movie’s basic outline is strong, but it blazes through all the major points so swiftly that few moments or personalities in the movie seem truly and committedly developed and thus wash off the viewer like so much Augean stable muck.

The one exception to that is Hades, who’s the most memorable aspect of the film. James Woods brings such a unique approach to the lord of the underworld. His motor-mouthed, upper management sleazeball vibe gives his take on Hades a different flavor that baddies from Disney’s past. Particularly given the way that Hades is a dealmaker and swindler in this one, his snake-oil salesman tone and casual aside manner works to create the best version of the character to oppose simple and sweet Herc and act as a thorn in the side of the far more worldly and skeptical Meg.

The animation of the character dovetails perfectly with Woods’s entertaining patter. The vision of the Underworld king’s head constantly aflame, turning red when he’s angry, and giving the air of casual disdain when in conversation works perfectly with this Wall Street-esque incarnation of the film’s baddie. It’s an excuse for the film’s aniators to deploy some cool flame effects and give the man himself some fluid movements that match with his sarcastic wit.

But that’s nearly where the design and animation achievements in this one end. The character designs admirably veer toward replicating the look of Greek pottery, but they’re not as visually pleasing as the traditional Disney style. Worse yet, it’s a poor meld with the actual animation for most of the movie. Characters are, if anything, over-expressive and -emotive, which leads to an uncanny valley effect for much of their movements and some downright grotesquerie in certain places. And apart from a few brief but inventive interludes with the muses, there’s not really any stand out sequences here.

The one place where the film takes a big swing and fares at least somewhat better is with CGI-assisted images. The clash between 2D and 3D animation is noticeable in places, and the execution is far from perfect, but the Hydra is still impressive as an effect for 1997. Similarly, the titans have a fluidity and distinctiveness to their elemental designs that sets them apart from the rest of the fine but underwhelming animation in the rest of the film.

That same semi-disappointment applies to the film’s usual numbers. Rest assured, none of the tunes in Hercules are outright bad, but few have that transcendent, soaring, catchy quality that’s made so many other Disney soundtracks unforgettable. “I Can Go the Distance” is a solid enough “I want” song, and “I Won’t Say I’m in Love” are nice, standard Disney tunes, but far from stand outs. The gospel tunes fare a little better, but blend together, with lyrics that don’t play as cute or clever as in past Renaissance flicks.

That partly speaks to one of the tough to pinpoint but overarching problem with the film -- it makes a lot of downright puzzling choices. Why are we using a Gospel-inspired soundtrack to tell a story of Greek myth? There’s nothing wrong with it in principle -- lord knows Disney has used traditional American musical styles to represent scads of other cultures -- but it leads to a dissonance between setting and sound that just comes off as odd.

If that were the only strange choice, you could write it off as an admirable but ill-fated big swing. But why is this film so bizarrely horny? Why does every other character make double entendres about Meg? Why does Hades have to try to flatter the Fates by hitting on them? Why is the biggest running joke about Phil that he’s a lech?

It’s strangely miscalibrated for a kids film, which would be fine if any of this stuff were particularly creative or amusing. Instead, the film’s sense of humor largely falls flat, brimming with obnoxious character bits, dumb over the top physical humor, and a lack of tonal consistency which leads to goofy moments being indistignuishable from heartfelt ones.

The one exception is the movie’s gags about Greek mythos and culture. Everything from Hermes delivering flowers, to a pair of kiddos telling Herc to call “IXII”, to Hercules himself watching Oedipus and laughing that “I thought I had problems!” shows how the movie finds neat ways to integrate intersections of modern life with ancient Greece in small but amusing ways.

That’s just not near enough to save this sprint of a film. The powers that be at disney seemed, in their heart of hearts, to want to make a Superman film here, and it moves with a commensurate speed. Far from faithfully adapting the original myths, Hercules instead tells the story of a boy descended from powerful people of another world, who grows up with incredible powers and eventually moves to the big city where he performs heroic acts and has Beatrice/Benedict chemistry with a local firecracker. The parallels go deeper, but it’s noteworthy how much this film plays in the same space as the Man of Steel.

It’s not a bad tack, but the movie just races through all of the plot points that it takes to establish that kind of mythos. Every major moment of growth for Hercules or his pals is covered in montage or otherwise yada yada yada’d over. From his childhood, to his training, to his ascendance as a publicly-adored champion, we get snippets and thumbnail sketches rather than enough time and space to invest in any stage of his growth and development. The film moves from one event to another in such quick succession that no single piece of the story arrives with as much force as its protagonist.

Still, it’s a good story. If Hercules were longer, or better structured, or better paced, it had the potential to be a minor gem, if not the crown jewel of the Disney empire. Instead, it gives the audience a mixed bag of comedy, animation, and music in service of an overly compressed narrative. It’s strange choices, and its disappointments, could be more easily forgiven if the film’s central plot worked as well on film as it did on paper (or pottery). Instead, the film matches its hero for most of the movie -- trying but failing to live up to its incredible legacy and great potential.