Review of Hercules (2014) by Joe W — 01 Jan 2016

The film is narrated by the muses, who take the form of an gospel chorus.

A major issue was the lack of personality among the Gods of Mount Olympus, including Zeus and Hera. If fully developed they could have added a lot to the story. Hades, voiced brilliantly by James Wood, is the exception to the rule, with his explosive temperament and even more volatile flaming hairstyle. His underworld realm is also visually superior to Mount Olympus, with the blue flaming torches, the strange underground structures, the cloaked fates cutting strings of life, and the skeletal minion rowing Hades' boat through a river of souls.

Distracting from the underworld and Woods' performance, unfortunately, are his two annoying comic relief minions, voiced by stand up comics Bobcat Goldthwait and Matt Frewer.

Danny DeVito plays the satyr Philoctetes, former trainer to "Odysseus, Perseus, Theseus - a lot of 'yeuseus'," His single song is not particularly great musically, but has some great stuff visually.

Susan Egan, from the stage adaption of Beauty and the Beast, voices the best developed character, the sarcastic "damsel in distress" Megara, who can best be described as a cross between Elaine from Seinfeld and Lois Lane from Superman.

The computer animated hydra might look passable on its own, but blending it against the hand animated backgrounds and characters creates glaring issues with differences in depth of field, proportionality, and lighting, which make the otherwise intimidating monster quite distracting.