Hercules CD Review

Music by Alan Menken, lyrics by David Zippel. Disney 60864-7, 24 tracks, 48:06 ***

This is Alan Menken's sixth excursion into animated feature territory, and with the composer not scheduled to work on any future Disney projects for the time being (though he has already contributed songs for the Roger Rabbit sequel), Hercules will go down as the concluding chapter of sorts in a lengthy collaboration between Menken and Disney, one that has proved to be a massively successful one for both parties. Time, however, will ultimately look down on Hercules as being the least significant Menken entry in the Disney musical genre; after five phenomenal efforts, perhaps the songwriter's energy was understandably beginning to dwindle a bit, and there's certainly a lack of creative spark unfortunately in evidence here.

Using a Greek gospel chorus to comment on and carry the film's plot along, Menken revisits the doo-wop style of his Little Shop of Horrors, but this time, the Motown-like rhythms and rousing themes of that score have been replaced with more generic and fair-to-middling gospel ditties. It's soul music that is much too calculated and downright flat, and the distinct lack of invigorating melodies subsequently stops much of this music dead on the album (in the film, at least it does serve to aid the story). Only in Susan Egan's "I Won't Say (I'm in Love)" does Menken and lyricist David Zippel's work become inspired in the Little Shop manner that much of the material aspires to.

The other songs in Hercules are likewise lukewarm, with a totally forgettable number for Danny DeVito's sidekick, "One Last Hope," sounding like an alternate, rejected version of the singing gargoyles' number from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. But perhaps the most telling sign of the songwriter's flagging interest comes in the treatment of the picture's central ballad, "Go the Distance," which is restrained so much that it's barely The Big Uplifting Number it was intended to be; combined with Roger Bart's annoyingly Michael Jackson-esque vocal delivery as the young Hercules, the song comes off as little more than a time-filler.

On the plus side, the pop treatment of "Go the Distance," performed by crooner Michael Bolton, is actually far superior to its film counterpart, with electric guitars, orchestra and thundering drums combining to make one of the more successful "commercial" arrangements of a Menken Disney song (still, it's no Beauty and the Beast).There's also plenty of orchestral score from Menken, but ultimately, Hercules adds up to little more than a footnote in the annals of Disney musicals. It's pleasant but average, inoffensive but uninspired, and ranks far below the outstanding previous work that Menken penned for the Mouse. After five classics and nearly ten years working for Disney, maybe now is a good time for him to take a break.