D52 Week 35: Hercules!

I can't help but wonder if I would've enjoyed this movie more had I not been overexposed to James Woods' episodes of Family Guy while living in one of the few states even worse than Montana!

After the grimness of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, I suppose it's only logical to have some palette-cleansing silliness. (And when you think of silly stories, the first thing that comes to mind is Greek mythology, right???) As such, like Aladdin a few years back, we get an ostensibly serious figure who ends up being voiced by a Particularly Unlikely Celebrity whose fast-talking mannerisms surely take forever for whichever fool(s) ended up being responsible for animating them. Of course, regardless of how James Woodsed out I might be for one lifetime, Robin Williams as the Genie makes his Hades seem reigned-in and relatively tame by comparison, in that he actually has, y'know, an actual concrete characterization and stuff. (Not that I'm implying that Ed Sullivan impressions don't count as characterization in and of themselves, but-- oh, actually, I TOTALLY AM.) And, yeah, again, there's kind of a romance somewhere in there, with a lady who's forced to get close to the Big Bad against her will - which is also more tolerable than some of the previous examples of this. Despite trying a couple of interesting things, Hercules is pretty much one of the more formulaic entries from the Renaissance era, but at least it's formulaic in a competent way, I guess!

Though, by all means, he's a perfectly pleasant fellow who'd be perfectly pleasant to hang out with (horrific strength-related accidents aside), Hercules is one of the most personality-free Disney protagonists we've seen in some time. As a teenager, he's endearingly awkward, I suppose. How can anyone with godlike strength be that gawky and skinny, anyway? Anyway, they ditch that endearingness pretty quickly, and he spends most of the running time being a genial and heroic but relatively bland celebrity. I mean, again, this movie's pretty clear that it just wants to be silly after the seriousness of last week, so why can't he get in on the act, too? Aside from slaying the CGI Hydra That Sticks Out Like a Sore Thumb and out-car-salesmanning Hades, he doesn't even engage in much in the way of epic adventurin'. It's a story that's ostensibly about Hercules, but that acts almost like it would rather not be. It's like making a biopic that completely ignores the important thing that its subject was famous for in the first place! And how does being willing to sacrifice oneself for someone you love more honourable than risking your life day in and day out to save strangers? For that matter, for the thousandth time, how is falling deeply, madly, passionately in love with a woman you had precisely one mostly-nice-but-awkward-at-the-end date with, and nothing else?

Strangely, though, Meg actually IS likeable. Disney women are a crapshoot, so I have to savour it when they produce a really good one. (Not that there was anything WRONG with Esmerelda, per se, but her primary character quirk was simply that every guy everywhere wanted to bone her, hard...) The interesting thing about her is that she's played as, essentially, a throwback to 1940s screwball comediennes, and in the process she manages to come across as decidedly more modern than that then-recent brand of Disney women who just get what they want by bitching and bitching and infinitely more bitching. In fact, I'd go as far as to say I wish this movie was about HER. Hercules is little more than Some Random Adopted Kid; she's got a far more interesting backstory. A far more interesting backstory that Hades recounts to us precisely once, and then it's promptly forgotten. What the hell, guys? The fact that she's so willing to give in to spending the rest of her life with "Wonderboy", after having her heart rather cruelly torn out and stomped on and humiliated in the stocks in the town square of her being, by the very guy that she SOLD HER FUCKING SOUL TO HADES TO SAVE IN THE FIRST PLACE....well, it's needless torpedoing of her interesting character just to serve the Standard Disney Renaissance Plot Generator Formula, and that's not cool. Yeah, I guess it's a prerequisite here given the myth they're adapting in the first place, but that doesn't make it seem any less silly; if I were in her situation, having gone through what she'd gone through, frankly, I'd need more than just a catchy tune performed by African-Greek statue ladies. (This is, for the record, the second consecutive Disney film where beings carved from stone counsel a main character on their love life through song.)

As for Hades, well....you'd think the Lord of the Underworld would be a little better at making shady deals, wouldn't you? The idea that Hercules can get out of his Taking a Day Off From Heroism Contract simply because Meg got hurt by some other freak accident is just....stupid. Nice going, Hades! Really, though, Hades' comical villain stupidity lends this film an oddly Saturday morning cartoon sort of vibe. Well, a really high-budget one, anyway. And that's not all. There's also the cheap-ass jokes (some of them are funny, but "Air Herc" just seems painful today), and the scoring that seems to insist on having goofy music drone on in the back of EVERY SINGLE SCENE apparently. And, trust me, I love Saturday morning cartoons! They're goofy and awkward and absolutely loveable - or they were, anyway, when they were still a thing that existed. (Godless VeggieTales re-edits don't count, I'm afraid.) But...there's just something that seems off about seeing one with a budget THIS HIGH. If you're going to employ, what, probably hundreds of animators overall, toiling for years, shouldn't you be aiming for something a little loftier? It's almost insulting! But still, admittedly, kinda fun.

(Though, given how kid-friendly most of this is...oh, how I don't envy the parents in the audience who had to explain that Oedipus joke!)

By the way, can anyone explain to me just where the hell this movie's supposed to be taking place? Mount Olympus is in Greece, of course. But then we have Heracles referred to by his more well-known Roman name! But, for the sake of confusion, Zeus is still Zeus instead of Jupiter. And then either-Pain-or-Panic-I-can't-tell-them-apart as the little kid makes the joke about calling "IX-I-I"! Oh, but clearly he's just so freakin' stupid that he doesn't even realise what empire he's in or something. Come to think of it, though, Bobcat Goldthwait strikes me as someone who has no idea where he is sometimes too! So, that JUST MAKES SENSE.

It's hard to think of much to say about Hercules. Again, it's competent, in a formulaic way. It's entertainment that's alright to just let safely wash over you, as though you're a Greek God and it's the soothing waters of the River Styx - at least it's not an actively painful experience. You just have to wonder why it got a theatrical release when something smaller would've suited this project just fine...

Well, I suppose you have to go all-out with your budget like that if you want to score famous big-name stars like Wayne Knight and Paul Shaffer!

This is, of course, as close as Greek mythology actually gets to "happily ever after"!

TERRIBLE AND UNNECESSARY AND WORTHLESS DIRECT-TO-DVD AND BLU-RAY AND GAME BOY ADVANCE VIDEO DISNEY SEQUEL: It's insane family madness galore in Hercules II: My Big Fat Greek God Wedding when Hercules and Meg announce their intentions to get married! While Zeus is thrilled by the news, Meg's dad Creon (Eric Allan Kramer) is not, feeling she's somehow dishonouring her family. But how far is he willing to go to stop her from making such a huge "mistake"? Why, OF COURSE he's willing to make a deal with Herc's Wacky Uncle Hades, who was presumed dead, but actually he's not; obviously, when the other spirits in the River Styx recognized him as someone famous, they rushed him to a top-secret science lab in Athens, or something. It's probably a trick or something. But can Hercules possibly set things right, without spoiling the family-friendly goat-themed bachelor party Phil went through so much trouble throwing for him? Um. Probably. (Who wants to bet that the publicity material for this would involve at least one use of the phrase "wedded blitz"?)