Reviews For 'The Legend Of Hercules' Are Absolutely Brutal
Jan 12, 2014, 04:39 IST
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This weekend's "The Legend of Hercules" is sitting at 2% on Rotten Tomatoes with 41 poor reviews.
(Earlier, the film was sitting at 0%.) For what it's worth, the one "fresh" review says the film's not that great, too.
The movie stars Kellan Lutz, a secondary character in the "Twilight" movies, who - outside that franchise - isn't really well-known for any other roles.
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Why is "Hercules" so awful?
Here's the worst of what the reviews have had to say:
NY Daily News: "It's amazing to think there were grown-ups behind the making of 'The Legend of Hercules.' This ludicrously written, buffoonishly acted, irritatingly filmed sword-and-sandals epic hasn't half the sand, sweat or saltiness of other titles in the genre" Indiewire: "A movie so ugly and woeful that you'll wish you had superhuman strength to pluck your own eyeballs out of your head ... "Harlin is content to go through the motions, endlessly aping the style of countless recent sword and sandal movies, most notably "300," with the director even mimicking Zack Snyder's love of "speed ramping" - where a piece of action is slowed down dramatically before being immediately sped up. The problem is that Harlin's version of these flashy techniques innately feels like a rip-off, and a cheap, poorly photographed, post-converted-into-3D rip-off at that." Screencrush: "The best way to describe 'The Legend of Hercules' is as the fake movie that teenagers in movies go to see. "Ripping off more from 'Gladiator' and, frankly, the story of Christ than the typical Hercules myth (no "12 labors" here, though the Nemean Lion gets a shout out) Lutz, a big lump of hamburger that makes Taylor Kitsch look like Daniel Day-Lewis in the acting department, is the half-human, half-divine hero destined to restore balance to the kingdom." Film.com: "Judging from the production design, costumes, and post-production crafts, "Legend of Hercules" didn't have the pockets to be ambitious. Talk of quarreling armies and godly interference are undermined by the suffocating scale (somehow, half-baked CG backgrounds still don't a candle to good ol' fashioned matte paintings). There's nothing mythic about this "Hercules." The filmmaking seems all too aware of that fact." The Hollywood Reporter: "Even the fight and battle scenes are unexciting because they're bogus, contrived and derivative; are we supposed to ooh and aah at twists and turns and stutter-action moves that began seeming old a year after The Matrix came out, and have been outdone by countless video games?" The Washington Post: "Recurring visions of the fake moon were just some of the moments that caused outbursts of incredulous laughter during a recent screening. Another such instance came when Hercules kills the Nemean lion, a computer-generated monster that looks like an animatronic stuffed animal ... "The movie is the cinematic equivalent of a run-on sentence that never pauses for a breather. It doesn't appear that a lot of time or effort was put into the script, but with this kind of cutting, director Renny Harlin (who also is one of the writers) makes clear what little value he places on words." Variety: "Totally kitsch in execution, from its wooden dialogue to its low-rent international cast and its very CG-looking CGI, "Legend" is ideal fodder for undiscriminating 12-year-old boys on a lazy weekend afternoon, though even they may opt to wait for the Rock in MGM/Paramount's Brett Ratner-directed "Hercules," due in July." Note: If you are heading to the movies this weekend, Spike Jonez critically-acclaimed "Her" and "Lone Survivor" starring Mark Wahlberg are also out this weekend in wide release. The latter film has a rare A+ CinemaScore.