It’s difficult to make a movie with “Hercules” in the title and yet have the movie be so incredibly boring, yet these filmmakers were up to the challenge.

We open with the dreaded voice-over narration which recaps that Hercules’ father was supposedly Zeus and was disliked by Hera. Don’t worry, none of this will actually become relevant to the plot in any way.

So you remember all those badass shots from the trailer, like where Hercules Matrix-runs up a tree and slays the Erymanthian Boar, or when he wades through a swamp to kill the dreaded Lernaean hydra, or when he fucked up the Nemean lion, and audiences were like, bitchin, this is the kind of movie I’d like to see? Yeah. All of these are recapped in the first 60 seconds as Hercules’ past exploits. We literally don’t see a single fucking frame more than what was in the trailer. Why? I can only presume one of two things:

1. The people who made this film are literally fucking retarded
2. The people who financed this film saw a script that was about all the badass things Hercules does and were all “This sounds really expensive” and “Why don’t you pretend the movie is about this but instead have it be about people standing around and talking about irrelevant things? And training montages. People fucking LOVE training montages.”

So we have the standard introductory scene where they kill a bunch of pirates and Hercules introduces us to his crew:

• There’s his most trusted friend and lieutenant who is going to oppose Hercules and leave at a crucial moment but return to save their asses just before the big climax, which happens
• There’s the crazy war-weary guy who doesn’t talk at all, but is going to say his first words just before his heroic death, which happens
• There’s the token chick who is tough as nails, wears a leather bikini, and is a skilled archer. She spends most of the film using her bow to bludgeon people to death because that’s how ranged weapons works. It happens
• There’s the crazy shaman who foretells the future and knows exactly when he is going to die. It doesn’t happen.
• There’s his storyteller nephew who pumps up the legend of his Hercules every chance he gets and desperately wants to prove himself on the battlefield but Hercules won’t let him because he’s not a fighter but you know he’s going to prove deadly useful before the end, which happens

Armed with our standard arrangement of cardboard cutout tropes, we get going. Team Herc are mercenaries and are one big job away from retiring (yes, really) and a hot princess shows up with an offer: Help a Lord fight off the neighboring warring tribe and he’ll reward them with Hercules’ weight in gold. This is the Rock we’re talking about, so they quickly agree.

Upon arriving at Lord Cotys’ pad they realize he doesn’t have much of an army so Team Herc has to train them on how to be warriors. Because when I watch a 90-minute Hercules movie, I want the middle movie 30 minutes to be about Hercules’ associates teaching a bunch of sweaty extras the finer points of the phalanx while Hercules himself wanders around, smirking at random people, having sweaty dreams about his past, flirting with the hot princess, and chatting it up with the princess’ son who is Hercules #1 fan.

Eventually we get down to business. Lord Cotys says they REALLY need to go rescue one of their villages from getting slaughtered by the other tribe. Hercules is like, no, let them die, our soldiers aren’t trained yet. Because he’s the noble hero. Lord Cotys is like, no, these are my peeps we gotta protect them. So off they go, with Team Herc riding on their giant four-horse chariots. They make their way over treacherous peaks and tiny inclines and passages so narrow that only one man can walk abreast and then we cut forward and the giant four-horse chariots are still with them, because logic will not be present in any part of this movie.

They have their first major fight against a bunch of heavily tattooed green-painted men who battle the Heroic White…Heroes. Team Herc, who have spent the past twenty minutes droning on about how important the fucking phalanx is and protecting your neighbors and KEEPING THE GODDAMN SHIELD-WALL INTACT…proceed to fight the battle outside of the shield-wall, and not wearing shit for armor, or helmets, and only suffering a few small scratches. Because.

Our Noble White Heroes fuck up the Uncomfortably Ethnic Bad Guys and it’s time for some back story. See, Hercules’ family is all dead, and it’s rumored that Hercules (accidentally?) killed them all. Got it? That’s all.

They now square off against the main Bad Guy force, but their farmers-turned soldiers are super-confident because they’re clad in some pimpin’ armor that Hercules’ nephew says is magic and blessed by the gods. Mostly, I wonder where this armor came from. They’re in the middle of nowhere and they haven’t come across any storehouses, they have no materials…how did they come up with 1,000 swords, helmets, shields, and hauberks?

But luckily, the past two weeks of training have turned these peasants into the greatest fighting force since the Spartans, and they fight the main bad guy and handily win and drag him and a few lieutenants back to the city as prisoners. As they roll inside, the Main Bad Guy shares a word with Hercules and says that he DIDN’T actually sack those cities…Lord Cotys did, as an excuse for the war. See, he’s part of the noble Freedom Fighters and Hercules is fighting on the wrong side.

PLOT TWIST. DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING.

Questions stream down like Gatorade body shots off Hercules’ oily pectorals. If Lord Cotys is the bad guy and is just out to conquer all the tribes around him in order to rule, why would he deliberately ignore Hercules and demand they go onto a suicide mission to save the neighboring tribe? It wasn’t a ruse, they were actually in very real danger. It’s almost as if the person who wrote this screenplay didn’t have a clue what they were doing.

Hercules confronts the hot princess and she confirms that she’s been lying to them all along, but only because Lord Cotys will kill her son if she doesn’t. And her son is actually the True Heir to the Throne. Which. Who could’ve guessed that?

Hercules confronts Lord Cotys, because it’s always a smart thing to tell the bad guy that you’re on to them. Cotys confirms that yes, he’s in it for the throne, and that now that Team Herc has fulfilled their usefulness…he’ll pay them in full, and they should get the fuck out while the getting’s good. Okay. I actually didn’t see that one coming, because it was the smart thing to do.

Hercules isn’t going to leave, so his trusted lieutenant peaces out with all the gold because he’s reasonable and values his own life. Team Herc comes up with a cunning plan: they’re going to storm in through the main palace gate and hope it works. Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t work and they’re all captured and thrown into the dungeons.

It’s time for a monologue, and Lord Cotys and King Eurystheus oblige. See, back in the day Hercules was getting way too popular so the King drugged him and then let his flesh-eating wolves in to devour Hercules’ family alive so the people would think Hercules killed his family and turn against him. This has scarred Hercules for life, and also does a nice job of white-washing Hercules since in the actual myth Hercules was driven mad and DID actually kill his family. Anyway, the crazy shaman in the group tells Hercules he needs to Believe in Himself and Hercules channels his years of steroid abuse into a moment of intense rage, busts himself out of his chains, and starts murdering people.

Team Herc fights their way free and find themselves outside and drastically outnumbered, except the trusted lieutenant shows up to bail them out of a tight spot. The crazy guy sacrifices himself to save the kid and dies, but not before uttering his one word: “Hercules”. The nephew stabs a guy right before he kills Hercules and realizes he’s Made It. The hot chick wears her leather bikini.

They run up behind a giant-ass statue and Hercules decides he’s going to stand under the scientifically impossible statue and knock it over, which is about as realistic as Hercules deciding he’s going to push over the fucking Space Needle. Anyway, this works perfectly, it kills the evil king, but surprisingly leaves most of his noble servants unharmed except for a few token redshirts whose deaths will all be unmourned. The remaining soldiers realize the error of their ways and immediately bow to Hercules.

And that’s that. End of the movie.

Also? The CGI and fight choreography is shit. Just in case you were wondering.

Rating: An episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood guest starring The Trunchbull