Hercules: The Legendary Journeys -- Season Four
September 2004 Reviewed by: Anthony Di Marco Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

My wife and I usually give our son a "chaser" to help medicine go down more easily. The chaser could be milk or juice or, if the medicine is particularly nasty, candy. This is the nature of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys -- a sweet-tasting chaser that wraps a basic morality tale into an entertaining action-adventure story. Kevin Sorbo's swashbuckling Greek hero appeals to teenage boys who imagine distant lands inhabited by mythic heroes battling spectacular creatures. And young women envision Hercules as their knight in shining armor, sporting flowing locks and rippling muscles. For those who feel my description sexist, don’t worry; the same group of filmmakers produced Xena: Warrior Princess so that guys would have their own head of hair and heaving bosom, er, muscles, to lust after.

Each episode of Hercules is written with tongue firmly planted in cheek, and they are a nod to those bedtime stories our parents told us just before we drifted off to sleep. Loyalty, trust, friendship, and altruism are just a few of the virtues woven into each tale. I watched many of the episodes with my four-year-old son; while the messages from the stories were a little too "deep" for a child of his age, he intuitively understood who was good and who was bad, and he giggled at the slapstick underscoring each conflict. You could almost see the wires jerk the stuntmen back as Hercules dispensed his god-given might. This gave each bloodless battle the quality of a circus performance rather than a struggle for life and death. By comparison, the Three Stooges seem more violent.

The filmmakers wear the show’s low-budget production values like a badge of honor. The CGI is obvious, and the stone temples and kingdoms stand as a testament to the 101 uses of modeling foam. There isn’t a second when the costumes suspend disbelief, or where the script doesn’t throw in 20th-century slang or pop-reference phrases. When Hercules is surrounded by silken cocoons in the episode "Web of Desire," his comment regarding "websites" made me laugh as much as a scene in "Armageddon Now," when the Ares gives a sales pitch to King Tendarius regarding weapons. Scenes like this add to the show’s campy charm and reveal the unpretentious attitudes of the filmmakers. They know what they’re making isn’t high art -- it’s all in the name of fun.

While the videophile may have issues with obscured detail, the images captured throughout this DVD exhibit good color saturation and black level. Audio is equally competent. The 5.1 surround mix has good dynamic range and makes sensible use of the surround channels. Vocal intelligibility is excellent. I only wish the DVD set included a stereo PCM or Dolby Digital 2.0 mixdown track. Playback through built-in television speakers or a two-channel setup produced poorly balanced sound. Dialogue that was easy to understand in 5.1 was overpowered by music and sound effects.

The same laid-back and playful behavior carried through to the well-produced extras. My favorite was the special-effects featurette "Bringing Monsters to Life at K.N.B. EFX Group." I found Howard Berger’s tour of his facility not only insightful but also refreshing in his total lack of political correctness or back-patting. Even the cast interviews were done in a creative and relaxed fashion, and the same political restraint was practiced by the cast and filmmakers. They simply talked about how they approach their craft and looked back upon that time in their lives with pleasure, as you might reflect on your own hours spent viewing this entertaining series. 

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