Cheap Hercules (Disney Gold Classic Collection) (DVD) (Tate Donovan, James Woods, Susan Egan) (John Musker, Ron Clements) Price

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Customer Reviews of Hercules (Disney Gold Classic Collection)

1) The story line is good enough...not outstanding, but good enough.

2) There's a really good bad guy (Hades) that you love to hate. He's so evil, self-centered, and conniving that you actually feel good detesting him. He's a classic Disney villain...cut from the same kind of evil character mold as 101 Dalmations' Cruella (animated and real-life).

3) The supporting characters "Panic" and "Pain," which I thought were only mildly annoying when I first watched the show, have really grown on me. They provide great comic relief. These first three points are enough to make this a 4-star movie, but the following point moves this video to 5 stars for me...

4) The clincher for me is that the music is awesome. Again, it takes some listening to in order to catch the vision of it. It's got a strong traditional gospel strain mixed with broadway chorus line pieces like songs from shows such as "Little Shop of Horrors," etc. I especially like the song that Megura sings, "I won't say I'm in love."

Sure there's a strong sentimentality factor to the show, but that's not at all unusual for animated Disney features. When all is said and done I think that's a plus!

If you look at my other reviews (e.g., Tarzan, Fox and the Hound) you'll see that I do not believe that all Disney animated features are 5-star affairs. Once you give this one a fair chance though, you may come to enjoy it as much as I do.

Give this movie a second and third chance -- maybe after the children are in bed, and see if it grows on you too.

I think it's worth 5 stars, and well worth the price!

Alan Holyoak

Damn right...lighten up people!
I saw Hercules for the first time in London in the cinemas. I think it's a great little flick. Good design, great Menken songs, great comedy writing. Disney have taken just the same liberties with the greek myths as they did with the Arabian Nights to make Aladdin. The Genie was a bully who had to be tricked back into his lamp in the original legend...but get Robin Williams to do the voice and suddenly he's the perfect good-guy sidekick. Why should Hercules be treated with such self-righteous vitriol just because it borrows from many legends to create a fast-paced, entertaining story? Does it ever occur to the Herc-haters that kids who watch this movie will not necessairily be tainted forever about Greek mythology, but might actually have an interest sparked to adjourn to a library to learn more about the Greek gods and legends? As we saw in Tarzan and Hunchback, Disney are perfectly capable of toning down the slapstick and doing a 'straight' story as well. If we wait long enough, we might actually see a character bleed sometime!

The muses were my favourites too...but oddly, to me they seem to work better on their own...I just feel that the 'Halle-LOO-ya!' black gospel attitude just doesn't say 'Ancient Greece' to me

Great teaching tool
Precisely BECAUSE of the complete disregard for the original mythology, this movie is a superb teaching tool for middle schoolers. After a unit on Mythology, the kids can identify for themselves the many creative changes Disney opted to make, and even better, they can figure out for themselves why Disney made those choices. It makes the kids savvier media consumers, they enjoy spotting the "mistakes," and the music is terrific and holds their attention. We all enjoy the fact that nearly every time the Muses sing "and that's the Gospel truth!" they're referencing something completely FALSE. And the group scene at the christening makes a great "test" of those symbolic identifiers--the kids like being able to identify the gods and goddesses based on the clues in their appearance.