HERCULES: Of Pleasing Daddy, Selling Merhcandise, and a Motown Chorus

Hercules (1997) – The 35th Walt Disney Animated Classic – Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker – Starring Tate Donovan, Danny DeVito, James Woods, Susan Egan, Rip Torn, Bobcat Goldthwait, Matt Frewer, Hal Holbrook, Paul Shaffer, Wayne Knight, Keith David, Frank Welker, Roger Bart, and Charlton Heston.

HERCULES is what happens when you push your formula one step too far.

Disney’s 35th Animated Classic comes near the end of the 1990s Disney Renaissance, and I think the film works as Litmus Test of sorts. If you love all things Disney, there’s enough here to make HERCULES a rather enjoyable film, while if you are not a fan of the Renaissance, my guess is that HERCULES is going to grate on your ears and eyeballs rather harshly. For me, I like the movie without embracing it fully. There’s an overwhelming sense of the ghost of other films’ ideas here than adds a sense of sameness to the film.

To be clear, there are parts of HERCULES that I love. The Motown-singing Greek chorus is fantastic and adds both an interesting and unique vibe to the movie. When these talented, toga-wearing ladies are singing, HERCULES sparkles with energy and cleverness. Unfortunately, they’re not the focus of the movie. While there semi-frequent appearances help the film, they’re in a secondary position to Hercules’ story, and that’s where the film comes up short.

Hercules (Tate Donovan does the talking, Roger Bart does the singing) is the son of Zeus who gets poisoned by two minions of Hades (James Woods) and loses his immortality. Hades wants to conquer the world or Olympus or Canada or something and the Fates tell him the only person who can stop him is Hercules and only on one specific night 18 years from that moment when the planets are in alignment and Hades can free the Titans.

Of course.

Your patience with that level of plot contrivance is just the kind of Litmus Test I was referring to up above. When Disney movies are working, it’s easy enough to accept this kind of set-up as the necessary foundation that allows for the enjoyable story to take place on top of it. When a film isn’t working, however, the foundation sticks up like an eye sore, and that’s what’s going on here. By telling us that Hercules is destined to save the world (or Olympus or Canada or whatever), the film renders it’s big training sequences kinda irrelevant. Hercules wants to be a hero in order to regain his godhood, which will allow him to live on Olympus with the other gods. (Plus, because it’s a Disney movie, he has the requisite Daddy Issues that plague many of our heroes and heroines.) Herc trains with Philoctetes (Danny DeVito), a satyr who earns his place in the world by training heroes.

Phil is in career crisis mode, however, as his past champions – Achilles and Odysseus (or maybe he calls him Ulysses – it’s not important) – have let him down. Hercules proves himself to Phil, however, and his training begins. These training sequences are incredibly common in the sword and sandal films, of course, and HERCULES does score some points by echoing those films.

It’s one of the few times in the movie where there’s something for older fans, because whatever else HERCULES is, it’s a Disney film that’s clearly aimed at a young crowd. There are some adult issues in the film, but for the most part, this movie is going for as young a crowd as any modern Disney movie. Characters have very little sense of grey; other than love interest Megara (Susan Egan), the HERCULES is populated with folks who are overblown in their attributes. Even the characters shapes and sizes are exaggerated, and Zeus’ big, smiling face is creepy in its intense, bug-eyed jocularity.

Hercules himself isn’t very likable, either. He’s a nice kid with big powers and a clumsy persona, but as soon as he finds out his human parents aren’t his real parents, he ditches them to go off and make his biological daddy proud and win his way back into Heaven. His instant decision to ditch his adopted parents makes him come off as a bit of a dick and his relationship with Phil just sort of happens.

Which isn’t to say there’s no enjoyment to be had watching Phil and Herc run through obvious routines, just that it’s the kind of enjoyment I get from a program when I fall asleep watching something else and then wake up and don’t have the energy to get off the couch to get the remote to get my TV to another channel.

James Woods is entertaining as Hades, but it’s a typical Disney Big Ugly villain, just as Bobcat Goldthwait and Matt Frewer are good as Panic and Pain, but they’re typical wacky henchmen.

The one shining star of HERCULES is Megara, the love interest with shady intentions. She made a deal with Hades to save her boyfriend and then that boyfriend ran off with someone else, leaving her without her lover and with a debt to pay to the God of the Underworld. Meg gets run through the standard plays-him/falls-in-love-with-him plot, but there’s some actual conflict and character development here.

At the end of it all, HERCULES is neither good nor bad. Or rather, it’s both good and bad, with some enjoyable moments tucked in among a lot of familiar territory. What brings me back to HERCULES is the enjoyable mix of the Motown sound with the Greek setting. Unfortunately, the songs are mostly forgettable and the Greek setting rarely stands out. Watching HERCULES isn’t a waste of my time – it’s just not the best way I can spend it.

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And hey, if you like all ages stories, check out my kid’s novel ADVENTURES OF THE FIVE: THE COMING OF FROST. Available now in both paperback and for the Kindle.

SCROOGED: I’m Sure Charles Dickens Would Have Wanted to See Her Nipples

Scrooged (1988) – Directed by Richard Donner – Starring Bill Murray, Karen Allen, John Forsythe, Bobcat Goldthwait, Carol Kane, David Johansen, Robert Mitchum, Alfre Woodard, John Glover, Jamie Farr, Buddy Hackett, and Brian Doyle Murray.

There are lots of adaptations of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but none of them scream the 1980s as loud as SCROOGED. Bill Murray, Karen Allen, John Forsythe, Bobcat Goldthwait, the Buster Poindexter guy, and the Solid Gold dancers all had a big decade, and they all come together in a rather entertaining comedy about a TV executive producing a live Christmas Carol broadcast who simultaneously has a Christmas Carol experience himself.

Frank Cross (Murray) is a complete dick, and runs his network like his own personal kingdom, despite the fact that it’s Robert Mitchum’s kingdom. He hates Christmas, hates subordinates, and hates himself. He drinks a lot and insults and bullies everyone he comes across. What’s nice about Murray playing the Scrooge character is his relative youth. Frank Cross isn’t a man at the end of his life, but in the middle of it. Ebeneezer not only knows he’s a jerk, but has suffered a lifetime of becoming increasingly miserable and isolated so his pump has been primed for a change. Cross is half his life from that moment; even though he’s been separated from his One True Love, Claire (Karen Allen), Frank is still a man climbing the social and economic ladder.

Despite being set in the present and despite not using the names of the Dickens’ characters, SCROOGED follows the general pattern of A Christmas Carol pretty closely – Frank is visited by a ghost of an ex-collegae, Lew (Forsythe), who warns him that three ghosts will visit him this night. The Ghosts come in expected order, and Frank is . The Ghost of Christmas Past (Johansen) is an incredible boor and cloaks himself in the garb of a taxi driver. (Not THE Taxi Driver, but a taxi driver.) As much as I dislike this character, the decision to start Frank off with a gruff ghost is a good one, as Frank needs someone who’s totally self-assured and doesn’t depend on him for anything. That’s the Ghost of Christmas Past – unshaven, bad teeth, cackling laugh … this is nearly as far out of Frank’s comfort zone as you can get. The connection between Past and Frank’s early days is pretty clear; Past represents the working class life Frank left behind. They witness Frank’s dad (Brian Doyle Murray) giving him a cut of meat for Christmas and while the ghost is appalled, Frank defends his father’s act as a good lesson.

There’s always a lot of weight placed on the Christmas Past ghost, as his visitation creates the back story for Scrooge. Past shows Frank his childhood, his early days as a low-level employee at the TV network’s Christmas party, happy times with Claire, and their eventual break-up, when Frank chooses his career (a dinner date with his boss, Lew) over dinner with their friends. Claire is heartbroken, but Frank is too career-obsessed to care. That they have this chat as Frank is in costume, playing Frisbee the Dog on a kid’s show, only serves to enforce the disconnect between Frank and Claire. It’s an absurd moment but it’s played perfectly straight by Allen and Murray.

And let’s just stop here for a moment to appreciate how awesome Karen Allen is as an actress. She’s plays off Murray as effortlessly and perfectly here as she does with Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Peter Reigert in Animal House, and Jeff Bridges in Starman. (Though, admittedly, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen that last one – feel free to call me out if I’m off-base.) All four of those actors require a different set of skills from Allen, and she usually only has a small amount of scenes to put those skills into action.

Christmas Past is followed by Christmas Present (Carol Kane), who continually smacks Frank around. She takes Frank to visit his brother James (John Murray), replacing the traditional role of nephew. The result plays the same, however; his brother laments Frank’s absence from his life and gets a trivia question about Gilligan’s Island wrong as Frank watches in disgust. (Not enough people give Dickens credit for his influence on Sherwood Schwartz sitcoms.) We also get a visit to his assistant Grace’s (Alfre Woodward) house, where he discovers that Grace has a kid who hasn’t talked since his father died.

Back to the network studio and we see Frank awaiting the visit of the third ghost as the live broadcast of A Christmas Carol (with Buddy Hackett as Scrooge) begins. Christmas Future gets only a quick appearance, sticking around just long enough to show Frank Grace’s mute son holed up in a mental institution and his own funeral.

Frank decides to change and his born again sequence is one of the greats. Murray plays it as much like a man coming off the rails as a man with a new focus in his life, really doing an outstanding job of walking that thin line between inspired and insane. He interrupts the live broadcast of A Christmas Carol to deliver a heart-felt plea for people to connect with their families. It’s a really great, really fresh version of the story, and Murray is completely convincing as a man unburdened by the weight he wouldn’t even admit he was carrying.

There’s plenty of great supporting work turned in by Bobcat Goldthwait, Robert Mitchum, and John Glover, yet for all of this, SCROOGED is merely a good movie and not a great one. One of the reasons why Scrooge is such a great character is because he is at the end of his life. He’s old, isolated, and bitter, and his trip with the ghosts reveals a man who’s life has gone wrong, and whose conversion speaks to the idea that it’s never too late to change. Frank Cross, on the other hand, is an unlikable lout in the middle of his life’s journey, drunk with power and not yet isolated from the world, and as great as Murray is, his descents into weepy territory don’t carry any weight to it. I’m not sure whether to laugh at the absurdity of his waterworks or feel empathy for his realizations.

I like SCROOGED but this was the first time I’d ever watched the entire movie in one piece; I enjoyed Donner’s film but I can’t say I feel any remorse at not having watched it previous to now. It’s a good movie but it’s ultimately a diversion rather than a film that sticks with me.

Be sure to check out the Holiday Review Index for all the Holiday-themed reviews to be found at Atomic Anxiety.