D: John Musker, Ron Clements
S: Voices of: Tate Donovan, James Woods, Danny De Vito
Given that The Hunchback of Notre Dame almost
took Disney animation into something darker and more intensely dramatic,
the follow up had to be a more resolutely conventional crowd-pleaser, and
Hercules is just that. Despite the well advertised presence of satirist
Gerald Scarfe as production designer, the film's breezy hipness and cheerful
zaniness falls somewhere short of Tex Avery and never really attempts a
moment of drama. It is a happily ridiculous rewrite of the classical mythology
of Hercules, son of Zeus, here made mortal by the evil Hades (brilliantly
voiced by James Woods) in an effort to prevent him intervening in the latter's
attempt to take over Mount Olympus. He must learn the tricks of the trade
from a world-weary Satyr (voiced by Danny De Vito) and deal with the elusive
charms of feminity as he develops his body and mind to face the challenges
of a true hero. It showcases typically spectacular Disney Renaissance animation
(with some computer enhancement) and boasts good vocal performances from
a range of actors. There's nothing so much wrong with it as the fact that
there's nothing all that special about it either.
The recent Disney films have been a varied crop, and each has an individual
identity which has defined them. Pocahontas has been the agreed disaster
of the bunch with its cowardly rewriting of history and disappointingly
unoriginal design, but Hercules does not really advance the cause
or the form significantly following the ambitions of some of its predecessors,
including Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.
It works, more or less, within its own frames of reference and a good time
can be had by the attuned. The characters are lively and exciting, the visuals
are impressively demented and the hijinks are generally interesting enough
to hold it all together. The songs are a bit of a letdown, lacking any real
punch despite the amusing soul music chorus motif. But when it's all over
it leaves less of an impression upon the mind than its forerunners. It never
moves from the confines of its slapstick universe or attempts to quicken
the pulse with anything other than harmless amusement. That it works is
less a testament to its quality than to the long-established Disney ability
to churn out a movie with the proper ingredients for basic box-office and
video sales. But the danger is that it might slip back to the era of production
short-cuts and by-the-numbers scripting if the execs become too easily pleased
by the workings of their marketing machine. Hercules does not represent
quite that, thankfully, but one voice-casting decision more or less could
well have tipped the scales.
But for the tots and tykes, it's all in fun, and most adult film viewers
will also enjoy this movie. It has many points of specific interest for
animation buffs, from the changing forms of representation of the human
body to the advancement of computer animation which continues visibly to
encroach upon classical techniques, but these are moot in the face of its
basic appeal. It's harmless entertainment with strong characters and some
moments of hip humour, designed to relax the mind and keep it parked in
neutral. There have been worse, but there have also been better.
Review by Harvey O'Brien copyright
1997.