Disney has found a Grecian formula that promises to be an Olympic-sized hit.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 18, 2024

Bursting with action and over-the-top goofiness, it's the most energetic animation to come out of Disney since Aladdin.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 18, 2024

In the galaxy of Disney movies, it's near the top but not among the greatest like Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and the original 101 Dalmatians. Still, a good-but-not-great Disney is Olympian fields ahead of the competition's best.

| Dec 18, 2024

Directed by John Muster and Ron Clements, Hercules has the buoyancy of their The Little Mermaid (but not its excellent score) and the sass of their Aladdin (without being a one-genie show).

| Original Score: A- | Dec 18, 2024

Hercules, all told, deserves a Greek chorus of congratulations. Not every movie manages to be both hit and myth.

| Dec 18, 2024

There are several reasons why people will flock to Hercules, one being its reassuring rootedness in the old Disney tradition, another being its imaginativeness in extending that tradition in new stylistic directions.

| Dec 18, 2024

For grown-ups who want to see animation treated as an art form, Hercules is already a winner.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 18, 2024

As Hades, a fiend with blue-flame hair, James Woods just about walks off with the movie.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 18, 2024

The script is nimble and funny, mostly broad but sometimes surprisingly whimsical or quick-witted, as well it should be, with humor and polish added by former stand-up comics credited with an Emmy-nominated Seinfeld episode.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 18, 2024

Students of Greek mythology may have some problems with Disney's legendary liberties taken with the story. But kids and most everyone else won't care in the least. They'll be too busy enjoying the comic adventures.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 18, 2024

While Disney's 35th animated feature is not the stuff of classical studies, it is a classical gas.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 18, 2024

Packed with Olympian delights and Herculean feats of animation, snapping with live-wire wit and wisecracks, Hercules is one of the funniest and most purely entertaining of all the recent Disney cartoon features.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 18, 2024

A clever, free-spirited, hilarious take on Greek legend, with a saucy Greek chorus belting gospel-like tunes to tell the story of the golden boy of steel.

| Dec 18, 2024

While the Titans and a few nymphs hint at a Fantasia-like luster that might have been, most of the new film is distinguished by a languid pace, a gaudy palette and a mostly dull vibe.

| Dec 18, 2024

The movie enters a plane of gratifying silliness.

| Dec 18, 2024

Hercules is the fourth animated Disney feature by the writing-directing team of John Muster and Ron Clements, and its humor, energy and pacing are on a par with their Aladdin and The Little Mermaid.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 18, 2024

Forget those high-fat, fast-food stomach churners clogging the other theaters in the multiplex like so much bad cholesterol: This is the true joy ride of the summer.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 18, 2024

Given that two of the screenwriters, Bob Shaw and Donald McEnery, have collaborated on episodes of Seinfeld, it's disappointing that the film is more cheeky than funny. But at least they succeed in making the story's themes relevant to a modern audience.

| Dec 18, 2024

The biggest surprise is how soft and cheap the animation looks. This Hercules doesn't look like a Disney film.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 18, 2024

There is a point, surely, where popularisation crosses over into impossible vulgarisation. Hercules goes beyond it.

| Dec 18, 2024