Review of Hercules

Hercules, released near the end of the 20th century, was directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, two of the best driving forces in Disney. However, seeing as how brilliant The Great Mouse Detective, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid were, Hercules was a bit of a disappointment. Even though it had all the qualities from their previous works, Hercules lacked in that certain charm which is reeling the audience to the characters and the scenes. The animation is gorgeous and the voice-over, just like in their other works, was simply top-notch. Seriously, James Woods as Hades was as crucial to this movie as Robin Williams was to Aladdin. I really enjoyed all V.O's but I thoroughly enjoyed Danny DeVito's V.O. as Phil. If you're familiar with DeVito's works then you will see that Phil is just Danny DeVito in cartoon form, with horns and I think that his line "Come on Kid, concentrate" to be one of the immortal lines in Disney-history!

Anyway, the film opens with Charlton Heston narrating which I think was the perfect way to open a feature (come on, he was known as Mr. Epic, right?) and then the Muses step in. They play a semi-important role in the film and I loved their screen-time. Although mythologically it's not 100% correct, it's near there. However I do like the fact that they made Hercules a very human character, not the typical cliche-filled who gets high with power and popularity. Despite the fame and popularity, he is still missing something from the inside. That was a good thing right there and he had a perfect balance of humor, anger, disappointment, happiness etc... all rolled in one.

All in all in conclusion I would like to say is that if you haven't seen many Disney productions, then you will end up liking this but, if like me, you have seen almost all, you will agree with me that it's not better than the ones that predecessed this one. I mean, the Musker/Clements team is legendary and I was expecting a little more better than this!

7.7/10