MOVIE REVIEWS: THE LEGEND OF HERCULES

Reviews of The Legend of Hercules are bulging with more beef than the muscles on the actors in the movie. Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News remarks that he was amazed “to think there were grown-ups behind the making” of the film, which he calls “ludicrously written, buffoonishly acted, irritatingly filmed.” Rafer Guzmán in Newsday can’t really define his beef with the movie, writing that “it’s difficult to pinpoint what exactly makes Hercules so awful. Each aspect of this movie seems magically worse than all the others.” But if you might be thinking that the movie might we worth seeing just to laugh at all the amateurishness, Todd McCarthy in the Hollywood Reporter has a word of caution: “If The Legend of Hercules were just a little more inept or over-the-top, it might have been ridiculous fun,” he writes. “As it is, unfortunately, [director Renny] Harlin embraces the mediocrity of the screenplay with a dour straight face, draining it of any enjoyably camp possibilities.” Scott Bowles in USA Today does acknowledge that “the film manages some nifty visuals and fight sequences that occasionally make you forget dialogue as rickety as a junk chariot.” And the most positive review of all comes from A.O. Scott of the New York Times who notes: “At the crowded preview screening I attended on Thursday night in Manhattan, there were audible hoots of derision, which were, for the most part, well earned. But really, this movie, with its relatively modest running time and not-quite-household-name cast, is no more ridiculous than, let’s say, the Thor movies, and a lot less pretentious.”