Hercules (1998, VHS)

Disney's Hercules is an enjoyable movie as animated films go. It's quite perfectly fine for a family movie. Being Disney, it's good enough for kids and it's good enough for adults. There should be plenty of usual Disney silliness to entertain the children, and there should be some witty humor that goes over the tops of kids' heads to amuse the grownups. Yet, Hercules is a prime example both at once of what's right with modern Disney and what's completely wrong with it.

What's right?

Well, it's Disney! That means that the movie as a certain amount of quality already attached to it. The animation is very well done, as usual, if somewhat too bright. And, although this depends on your tastes, the music is alive and easy to sing to. The movie, like most post-Mermaid Disney movies, has a certain hip-ness to it.

What's wrong?

Being Disney, they just HAD to be revisionist. Of course this isn't what's wrong with it. I can stand revisionism. But Hercules marks a disturbing trend in Disney thinking, that being the forsaking of characters and story for humor. If Bambi is proof of anything, you don't need to give up both for humor. In fact, humor comes from the characters. What we get in Hercules are nothing but gimmicks. Okay, I admit Scar's cameo was funny, but the Herc sneakers, Herc action figure, and Herc sports drink were just too much. The gospel singing was fun though. And speaking of funny, some of the jokes just fell flat. Okay, this is just my taste, but this movie wasn't as funny as Aladdin, which had humor and a story.

Rule #1--A movie is only as good as its characters. With that said, the characters were flat. The only interesting character was Hades. You're not supposed to root for the bad guy. It's not done that way. Even still, he didn't seem evil enough. Panic and Pain are the most annoying characters ever created since the gargoyles from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. They were supposed to be the comic relief, but they weren't funny. Give me Genie any day of the week. Finally, Meg is one of the worst female characters ever created. She's so badly drawn that she's practically anorexic. No thank you.

Maybe I'm overanalyzing. Overall, this isn't a bad family. As a Disney movie, however, it's only average. The ditching of story for gimmicks is not a positive trend in my opinion. Unless this movie was SUPPOSED to be all gimmicks. In that case, it succeeded. But as it looks compared to most Disney movies, especially the classics, it doesn't look like much.