Hercules

This has nothing to do with Hercules, but I have to mention it. Tonight, I saw something I have never seen at a movie. One of the patrons (a younger, college age person) brought his own neck pillow. Society is getting weaker by the minute. Hercules would never need a neck pillow!!!!

Set in 358 BC, Dwayne “We Will Always Call You The Rock” Johnson stars as Hercules – the son of Zeus and a noble man who has become bitter due to life and circumstance. This demigod once was considered a great and conquering hero, but, after the brutal murder of his wife and children, Hercules couldn’t care less about society. He doesn’t want to be a role model! Hercules and his buddies have become the bloodiest and most savage mercenaries available for hire, but this latest job changes the big buff strongman and his pals.

The kingdom of Thrace is being torn apart by civil war, so Lord Cotys (John Hurt) and his lovely daughter, Ergenia (Rebecca Ferguson), hire this band of merry men (and one lady) to train their army to be as savage and nasty as they can be to hunt down the rebel leader, Rhesus (Tobias Santelmann). However, Ergenia stirs something in Hercules’s soul (and his loin cloth) making him question the life he has been leading.

When he has a chance to stand up for right vs. wrong, will Hercules be man enough to make the right decision?

Hercules is funnier than Tammy and Sex Tape combined! Granted, I don’t think it was supposed to be THAT funny, but it is hard to take a movie seriously when the hero is parading around with a lion’s skull on top of his head.

Also, writers Ryan Condal and Evan Spiliotopoulos are trying to get plenty of laughs in the partly campy send up of the Hercules we have seen over and over again in movies and on television. Director Brett Ratner and the cast embrace all of the silly dialogue, wise cracks and bad attempts at British accents to bring some amusement to the maudlin tale.

However, it doesn’t always work. Ratner and the crew want to have their cake and eat it to by relying on the campiness to get the audience laughing, but those scenes don’t mesh well with the more serious moments. Laughing doesn’t combine well with The Rock trying to give his big Braveheart speech or when he’s looking all haunted and disturbed when we flashback to Hercules’s horrific past.

Hercules gets bogged down in those more serious moments, but Ratner moves through those quite quickly to get to the big fight scenes. It’s all about special effects, not emotional ones! Unlike most directors these days, Ratner actually knows how to film these scenes, so the audience isn’t left dizzy and confused by poorly framed action and jiggly cameras. You can follow these fight scenes without getting nauseous, which doesn’t happen in 95% of action movies in theaters.

Hercules should have been heroic, or it should have been campy, but combining the two doesn’t make for a great movie. It’s a movie you can enjoy and forget.

Hercules is rated PG-13 for epic battle sequences, violence, suggestive comments, brief strong language and partial nudity.