Our hero is a bionic, noble doofus with calves so big they look like bowling-pin implants. This is understandable, but in its place, the mouse factory has inserted narrative mush that’s ineptly conceived, woefully performed by the off-screen actors and badly animated. In the Disney movie, the dark material has been airbrushed out of existence. One night on the heroic road, for instance, the Herkster rewarded one of his hosts by sleeping with all 50 of the old man’s daughters. There’s more: As a youngster, Hercules killed his music teacher, Linus, for reprimanding him (kids, don’t try this at school), and he tended to help himself to any damsel that crossed his path. So when the adult Hercules married Megara, the queen of Mount Olympus rendered him temporarily insane, causing him to slaughter his wife, three children and two of his nephews.

When that failed (the kid strangled the snakes), Hera couldn’t rid herself of that yucky, vengeful feeling. Hera, Zeus’s betrayed wife, was so enraged, she sent serpents into baby Hercules’ crib. For starters, in classical mythology the Greek hero was the result of an illicit union between Zeus and a mortal, married woman called Alcmene. The story behind 'Hercules,' Walt Disney’s insipid, lifeless, animated feature, is hardly the stuff of children’s entertainment.