recommended

Expected more

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

The fact that my life and exploits of my relatives have always amused and annoyed me, and this retelling about my baby brother, well, he's over 2200 years old now, is not among the best. I mean, Steve Reeves gave him presence, Sorbo gave him character and even Ferrigno showed his power, Paul Telfer touches on his humanity as he meanders through his scenes spouting lines and exorcising character. The movie is basically a large budget wasted on a high school play. The stories are horribly and shockingly rewritten, to the point of practically being insulting. It tries to tell the untold story of Hercules never before depicted, but it makes up a new far-fetched version. This isn't so much a biography as a character assassination confusing the Sphinx with the Nemean Lion and the Harpies with the Stymphalian birds. I'd have expected much more from Halmi and Pogue. It depicts Amphitryon as a noble man, but Alcmene is shrewish, short-tempered and manipulative. Lovely Leelee Sobieski plays Deianeira, who is now over-joyed to hear she is now a nymph and not just a Calydonian princess annoyed by the fact she broke up her own marriage. The movie is a horribly condensed version of the true story, merging the details and confusing the motivations, quite insulting to the those purists who religiously follow the "myths" we left behind. There is very little basis on the actual story, just a half-twisted loyalty. Paul Telfer looks a bit like Tom Welling, the actor playing that Kryptonian character, and obviously relishes in the role. The cast places much effort in their roles, but all too often chewing the scenery and not once questioning this retelling. The true story is much more better than retelling it. Children and descendants, if you want to know about my baby brother, watch the "Legendary Journeys." He does and he gets a kick out of them, but he can only muster a few minutes of this film before shattering the picture screen with a beer bottle!

I don't know how expensive was the creation of this movie but the effects were awful. Half of the movie was filmed on stage in front of a movie canvas (that's sure that blue box wouldn't look so artificial). When they traveled on a boat, the background canvas was moved imitating the movement of waves but the characters weren't moving. The CGI effects: terrible (I am not sure but I guess the effect were created with Paint and made a GIF sequence of them - next time the creators should hire a professional CGI maker team). It looks like the CGI creator would have drawn on the picture strip with shaky hands. Awful, that's sure. When I first saw the trailer, I thought it was created in 1983. One of my friend told me the correct date: 2005. My jaw dropped, I was so shocked, I thought he was kidding. People, I recommend you to skip this movie, the story is also twisted, you won't enjoy it.

This is easily the worst adaptation of Greek mythology I've ever seen. It utterly fails as an adaptation of the original myth, inventing silly plot twists and reducing the 12 labours to... 3 or 4, I think. It makes up utterly needless things to try to integrate other myths in clumsy ways which bring into question the writers' having ever read the myths, like changing birds to harpies, lions to sphinxes, the Oracle of Delphi to Tiresias, and bulls to a pedantic version of Proteus, even integrating aspects, never seen outside of Sam Raimi's entertaining series, concerning his first marriage, to a woman with the co-opted name of one of the Furies so it sounds appropriate to the period.I could accept much of that, but it also fails completely in pure film standards; most painful is the dialogue, leaden, portentous pseudo-Shakespearean tripe. It is a poor re-interpretation of the myths, making a sad attempt at the kind of post-modern revisionism that Crichton's "The 13th Warrior" attempted in regards to the Beowulf legend, while still including the strictly mythological elements such as clear interference from the gods and magical super-strength. A sad, sad failure of an entertainment experience, who I'm sure many of the quality actors involved regret deeply.

The latest version of Hercules is thoroughly entertaining with stand out performances from Elizabeth Perkins and Kristian Schmid. The scenery was magnificent and suited the epic nature of this adventure. Director Roger Young really got the most out of his actors, many of whom are highly respected. (Perkins, Dalton, Astin)There is nothing stuffy about Hercules (unlike many other Greek tragedies which have been filmed). The performances are charged with emotion. The stakes are high. The adaptation was accessible and clear, far superior to the last production starring Kevin Sorbo. My only query is why everyone except Leelee Sobieski was in English accent. I really enjoyed it and would like to see the longer version, which will hopefully come out on DVD. It's a shame it was up against Everybody Loves Raymond's finale because Hercules should have reached a wider audience.