dukeakasmudge I never watched Hercules: The Legendary Journeys or Zena: Warrior Princess when they 1st came out until I started hearing a lot of talk about them at the time so I decided to check out both shows & I was BORED out of my mind.I came across Hercules And Xena - The Animated Movie: The Battle For Mount Olympus on VHS at the local thrift shop & thought, why not? It's only $1 I never knew they made them into an animated movie where they teamed up together & even though I HATED the TV shows I thought maybe I'd like the cartoon but I HATED this movie as well.I watched exactly 25 minutes & just could NOT watch anymore.I was BORED out of my mind.The entire 25 minutes I was able to sit through, the only thing on my mind was what other movies I could be watching.I just could not focus & didn't care.I think the only people that are going to like this movie are fans of the Hercules/Xena TV shows.The only thing I did like about Hercules And Xena - The Animated Movie: The Battle For Mount Olympus was that they used the actor's voices from the original TV shows & not just anybody's voices.This movie's definitely getting donated back to the thrift shop

Victor Field I'm not saying it's devoid of good points - the original cast members furnish their characters' voices; it's only 76 minutes long; and lots of Joseph LoDuca's unoriginal but rousing music from the two shows is tracked in as underscore.But that's it.John Loy's script completely misses the spirit of the live-action shows (tellingly, he never wrote for either "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" or "Xena: Warrior Princess"); the inclusion of three (bad) songs is pointless and irritating, especially the one sung by the Titans; and the animation is, quite simply, appalling - from the giant sea creature that keeps changing colour during the opening battle with Hercules to draughtsmanship that achieves the remarkable feat of making Gabrielle look ugly (when she hasn't been turned into an eagle... poor Renee O'Connor. Then again, she gets the least dialogue in the bad script), this is cheap animation without any of the charm that other cheapskate cartoons can have.Not that the Disney version of "Hercules" didn't have any flaws of its own, but it's streets ahead of this one in all respects; if the parent shows were as bad as this one (and some people say they are), they would have been about as successful as "The Adventures of Sinbad."

RogerBorg Animation offers the opportunity for film makers to throw off the constraints of live action and produce creative, intelligent and original work. See the Simpsons and The Iron Giant for examples.That opportunity has been badly squandered here. The bursts of genuine genius and joi de vive that typify the live action originals are gone. Instead we are left with a mediocre slog that would have been tiresome without the breathtakingly appalling animation that makes "He-Man" look cutting edge.

Gislef Well, okay, maybe we didn't expect musical numbers, of which one, "We're the Titans," is exceedingly bad (We're the Titans - boom chucka lucka lucka - boom chucka lucka") although the others are okay.Basically it's a big-budget version of a Hercules episode (even the CGI of the show couldn't sustain these monstrous fights). The problem is, they didn't want to seem to spend _any_ budget on the animation. Minimalist backgrounds and crudely drawn figures might be some kind of stylistic statement. Then again, it might just be cheap animation. The characters themselves are rather grotesque: Xena has a odd reddish streak in her hair, while Herc is grotesque: one scenes has his veins literally bulging out of his arms during a moment of extreme exertion. As Aphrodite would put it, "Gross!"Even the plot is pretty minimalistic: doesn't Olympus have more than 5 gods?? It's nice that they got Kevin Smith for the always sneaky Ares (and Alexandra Tydings as Aphrodite, although her character has nothing to do), and there are some funny kid-type moments (the Olympians being turned into farm animals). Generally, though, it's a lot grimmer than the Hercules series: closer in tone to a Xena "serious" episode. Of course, there's no real continuity with the series, either, which has never had Alcmene head off to live with Zeus before her series death.Basically, H&X ain't bad as a kiddy flick, and die-hard fans of the series, which the movie apparently caters to, probably won't be disappointed. But other than that, there's not much to recommend it.