Director: Arthur Allan Seidelman
Actors: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arnold Stang, Deborah Lewis, James Karen
I'm not entirely sure that this film is intended as a comedy per se, it's intended as more of an action adventure type thing I imagine but for the sake of this let us imagine that it is a comedy. A very well respected film critic who many in the UK will be familiar with, Mark Kermode, often says that the test of an acceptable comedy is that it makes you laugh 5 times or more. With that in mind I can safely say that you will laugh enough to make this an acceptable comedy.
So, on to the plot... Or what the film makers cobbled together in order to have Arnie showing off his muscles as much as possible. That's right, if he's not half naked from being picked up by a ship in the middle of the Atlantic, then he's taking off his shirt to throw javelins or to take part in a test of strength competition. Hurrah! Hercules (Arnie) is thrown out of "Mount Olympus" (or some steps in a park somewhere - seriously, you can hear the background noise of traffic and children playing) by Zeus; and Juno (Zeus' wife) wants to get rid of him for good - Hercules is Zeus' son by another woman. So far so predictable, but the real twist is that Hercules is not thrown out of "Mount Olympus" to ancient Greece... He is throw out in the modern world. So Hercules ends up in New York! What a curveball.
Now, you don't need to be a classics scholar to have already noticed something rather fundamentally wrong already. We are supposedly talking about ancient Greek gods and yet most of the gods are in fact Roman: Juno, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Pluto and even Hercules himself should in fact read Hera, Hermes, Aphrodite, Ares, Hades and Heracles. In fact only Zeus and Nemesis are properly named. Naughty film-makers not doing their homework. I imagine the Roman names are more recognisable, and Heracles in New York doesn't have quite the same ring to it. This is, of course, the absolute least of the glaring errors in the film but I thought I'd mention it for completeness and because I'm a bit sad about such things.
Wether it's switching rapidly between day and night mid-scene, absolutely incomprehensible cuts to exactly the same scene but at a slightly different angle, wobbly camera work (before it was fashionable) or just incomprehensible Arnie, this film is in fact so bad its good. Most people don't believe me when I say that but it actually is. It does baffle me how anyone could have thought that this was in any way acceptable, and it was made a year after Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey so its age is not the reason. Of course, the budget was clearly not that of 2001, look for the zoo scene and Arniecles' fight with a "bear"for proof of that. The supporting cast clearly made a joint decision to act a lot more to make up for the lack of acting (or English language) coming from Herr Schwarzenegger. Just spectacular.
Arnie is clearly someone who has been satirised and caricatured over the years, but it appears than nobody can do as good a job as the big guy himself. This film is terrible, and I absolutely love it.
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