The backgrounds are lovely and detailed i spent the whole movie looking at them.

But the hero of this story for someone who has super strength isnt very strong when it come to carrying a movie i found hades did that.

But i did enjoy this movie though the songs are great.

Cool, quirky visual style, great story, and a lot of humour. Even though the characters weren't exactly what I wanted it to be, they had their moments and weren't at all boring. I especially liked Meg. She just brought something different that no other Disney film had ever done. I am actually not a big fan of half the music in this movie, mostly just the Gospel Truth songs, but the others were great!

This is the first movie I ever saw on the big screen, so its special to me. Though its not quite up to 4 star status, I still think its a great movie. LOVE IT! 3 1/2 stars!

This film is a great comedy. There are loads of laughs packed into it. The animation is great and the songs are fairly enjoyable, as is the score. The characters, although not fleshed out much, are still fun. The best character in my opinion was Hades, he made the movie. It's not one of Disney's best 90's films, but it's definitely worth a watch.

I take a look at my list of some of the "bigger" Disney movies which I'm not too terribly fond of. Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Tarzan, and Hercules. The first three I've reevaluated my opinion of them into a more positive light. Tarzan gets left behind. Should Hercules join the first three? In my opinion, no. I've already given Tarzan a two star rating. What do I give this one? It's not a one-and-a-half star piece of dreck, but it's also arguably worse than Tarzan. I'll just leave it at two and be satisfied.

Consider the elements that make Hercules what it is. The animation is bright and colorful but perhaps too much of a good thing. Hercules himself, like Tarzan, is a muscle-bound icon of sheer perfection, which doesn't make for challenging narration or plot. The sidekicks Panic and Pain are even more annoying than the gargoyles of Hunchback. Meg looks terrifyingly skinny. And the typical messages Disney likes to shoehorn into their movies are even more stupendously obvious. Thankfully, the villain of Hades is a much more fun villain than Tarzan's Clayton. I only hope that I'm not demonstrating ambiguity here. Where I complained that Tarzan was a tad too violent, here Hercules looks far too sanitized, safe, watered-down and much too much like the same typical Disney.

I'd grown used to thinking that 'Hercules' marked the low point of the slump that Disney went through between 'Lion King' and 'Tarzan'. Having re-watched the four movies recently, I'd now give that honour to 'Pocahontas', but 'Hercules' is about as weak as I remember it.

It's a shame, because there are some definite plusses. James Wood as Hades is probably Disney's most memorable supporting character since Genie in Aladdin. The Motown muses were kinda fun. There were some cute ancient Greek lines that only adults would get. And it was a relief to have a comedy after 6 years of dramas - especially after the very downlifting 'Hunchback of Notre Dame'.

But there was too much wrong with this movie. First, the central character was just plain dull. Dull, dull, dull. The animation was fine, but I mean there was this big thing at the time about how amazing it was that Hades' hair was always on fire. I remember even seeing a short doco on how they'd animated it. Looking at it now, you have to think, what a fuss about nothing. Plus the backgrounds were weak compared with what Ghibli had been doing over 10 years earlier.

More annoying sidekicks, more formulaic songs, more just not quite getting it right. Mulan was a slight improvement over this, but it took Tarzan to break Disney out of their artistic stagnation.

Not an important or memorable entry in the Disney filmography, though I guess they've done worse.

Not a bad film, Hercules has a lot of interesting stylistic elements. The humor is trendy, hip, and up-to-date, and the character art, for the most part, is given an Ancient Greek twist by the animators.

Except for one character--Zeus, very much based on the old-fashioned Fantasia-style Lord of Olympus. Still, it fits his character, as Zeus tells lame jokes and generally acts behind the times. So, actually a rather clever touch, in a way.

This movie almost has it all--the Muses singing forms an enjoyable framework for the film (a device unabashedly ripped-off from Little Shop of Horrors, BTW) the songs aren't bad, the design is good, the characters are mostly good. Phil, the philandering, hot-tempered trainer of Hercules, is probably one of the most enjoyable personalities in the film. (The least enjoyable are the whining, bumbling sidekicks of Hades, Pain and Panic, who strike me as obnoxious and thoroughly expendable little refugees from a Nickolodeon cartoon.) Hades is definitely the life of the party. Meg is one of those sleazy-with-a-heart-of-gold heroines which Disney was sticking in everything at the time (though she definitely has her moments), and Hercules is..well...bland.

But there's not much in the way of emotional depth in Hercules. It's not likely to give you a lump in your throat (unless you were trying to swallow something when Hades releases and redirects the Titans)

The humor and design make Hercules well worth seeing. The lack of depth in the hero and plot will probably keep it from being considered a true classic, though.

(One enjoyable little touch to watch for--when Hercules is posing for an artist, wearing the skin of the Nemean Lion--he removes the lion skin to show that it has the face of Scar from the Lion King.)

I saw an interview on TV once with James Woods where he talks about auditioning for the role of Hades. He was saying how he wasn't sure how Disney would take his interpreting the character as this fast-talking "corporate big-wig" but, fortunately for us, they loved it. I found that as I watched this movie I was eagerly awaiting the scenes with Hades which, unfortunately, doesn't say much about the good guys. I found I couldn't connect at all with the character of Hercules whose shallow, boyish antics were amusing but didn't make me really sympathize with his plight.

Great music and great musical numbers--particularly the "gospel" numbers--although at times they seem to almost overwhelm the rest of the film.