Critic Reviews

It’s a grandly staged, solidly entertaining, old-fashioned adventure movie that does something no other Hercules movie has quite done before: it cuts the mythical son of Zeus down to human size (or as human as you can get while still being played by Dwayne Johnson).

It may sound like a backhanded compliment to praise this sometimes cheesy movie for never taking itself too seriously, but in a summer of bloated spectacles, this modesty should not be underestimated.

The mythically powerful demigod is back on the big screen in the simply titled Hercules and the results are canny, fast-paced, and, for what the film attempts to accomplish, enjoyable.

Johnson is genuinely talented. He's often the best thing in bad movies, and Ratner's Hercules is, at the very least, pretty good.

Unsurprisingly, Johnson makes for a perfect movie-star Hercules, and the film gets a lot of mileage by playing his charismatic-but-modest take on the character off of the strong, predominantly British cast.

If anything gets lost in the mayhem, it’s Johnson’s reliably charming personality.

With Hercules, Brett Ratner and Dwayne Johnson are out to entertain you — no more, no less. And that is just what they do.

There are some rousing battle scenes, preceded by stirring addresses on the subject of going to Elysium – all cheekily borrowed from Ridley Scott's "Gladiator."

By the beard of Zeus! Brett Ratner delivers fast, fun thrills to score a sound victory over Renny Harlin’s laborious The Legend Of Hercules.

Sure, the film is crude, calorific and full of groanworthy half-jokes, but it holds together. It stacks up as an oafish pleasure for an undemanding summer – a rewriting of myths in scrawled crayon, with a nonchalant quality that makes its judiciously brief running time fly by.