The new Dwayne “The Rock’’ Johnson version of “Hercules’’ isn’t being shown to us New York City film critics until one hour before it opens here Thursday night. But mixed notices have begun trickling in from an early screening in London, and some are more generous than you might expect for a film whose distributor seems to anticipate brutal stateside reviews.
The Independent pronounces it “good, idiotic matinee entertainment’’ and awards two stars (out of five) to what it calls an “engaging preposterous film.’’ The reviewer notes “a self-mocking quality to much of the dialogue . . . ‘What a load of crap!’ someone exclaims after hearing the legend of Hercules and his 12 tasks. The performances all appear to be tongue in cheek.’’
The Guardian’s reviewer ups the guilty pleasure quota to three stars. “Pec-oil supplies plummet as the great muscly hero of classical antiquity arrives, played by [Johnson] in glittering semi-nudity,’’ he writes. “Brett Ratner’s cheerfully ridiculous and entertaining film begins by saying that he is ‘the son of Zeus — the Zeus!’ That’s in case there’s any confusion and someone blunder up to him mid-battle and says how much they enjoyed his dad’s masterpiece ‘The Cat in the Hat.’ ” The Guardian goes on to say there are also “some rousing battle scenes . . . all cheekily borrowed from Ridley Scott’s ‘Gladiator.’ ”
Over at Empire Magazine, it’s also three stars out of five: “. . . brisk, brutal, silly (in a good way) pulp entertainment, whose clunky exposition and continuity errors can be easily forgiven. Harder to swallow is the way it lets its own central conceit down during a blandly over the top and muscle-headed final blast.’’
But Time Out London is less bullish in their two-star notice: “A complete mess: The plot barely hangs together, the characters are meagerly sketched and the 3D digital effects are plasticky, indistinct and wearying to look at. The script contains a handful of decent comic asides and there’s one great mid-battle moment where Herc throws a horse, but on the whole this is decidedly non-legendary.’’
Back in North America, box office prognosticators are predicting the popular Johnson and his 12-labors-of-love “Hercules’’ will be handily trounced by Scarlett Johansson and her sci-fi action movie “Lucy,’’ which is also opening wide this weekend.
Analysts are saying that “Lucy,’’ which was moved up from a planned August opening, could take in as much as $34 million stateside this weekend, about $10 million more than the most optimistic current projections for “Hercules.’’ The rival “The Legend of Hercules’’ with Kellan Lutz opened to a paltry $8.8 million in North America on its way to a disappointing worldwide gross of $61 million.
Box office analyst Scott Mendelson of Forbes says that if the film, which reportedly cost $110 million, “outright bombs (or severely under-performs in regards to budget) this weekend, it will be the first big-budget studio flop of the summer.’’
Though there has been no shortage of box office disappointments, like the Tom Cruise vehicle “Edge of Tomorrow,’’ Mendelson writes, so far this season hasn’t produced any expensive mega-bombs like last summer’s “The Lone Ranger,’’ “R.I.P.D.’’ and “White House Down.’’