Going the distance

This raucous rocker sends up Disney's own merchandising

by Jeffrey Gantz

With just six songs, the Hercules soundtrack -- music and score by Alan Menken (who's done all the new Disney animations except for The Lion King), lyrics by David Zippel -- is a Pandora's box, tiny but crammed. After the Muse girl-group quintet have set the stage with a tell-it-like-it-is "The Gospel Truth," the youthful Hercules determines to "Go the Distance" (Roger Bart does the film version, Michael Bolton the single). Zippel's lyrics -- "I'll be there someday/I can go the distance" -- are as bland as Stephen Schwartz's were for Hunchback's "Out There," save for the closing lines; Menken's anthemic march makes it all work. Philoctetes's "One Last Hope" is classic '40s-'50s Broadway, Danny DeVito sounding startlingly like Stubby Kaye.

The Muses' raucous-rocking "Zero to Hero" is a simultaneous celebration and send-up that segues into a double-time call-and-response: "Who put the glad in gladiator? Hercules" (on screen the name gets spelled out in Greek letters, one per shield -- just a single example of the ingenious dovetailing of sight and sound in this number). Megara's "I Won't Say (I'm in Love)" has Susan Egan (the Belle of Disney's Broadway Beauty and the Beast) soaring Ronettes-style over the admonishing Muses ("Face it like a grown-up/When ya gonna own up/That ya got got got it bad?") before she relents and they dissolve into cooing shooby-doos and sha-la-las. The gospel-triumphant closer, "A Star Is Born," plays off the concluding image, Hercules literally going up in lights as Zeus makes him a constellation.

And Menken's score, weaving the songs into its texture, is filled with subtle touches: echoes of Rhapsody in Blue for "The Big Olive"; a wistful section in "Destruction of the Agora" when Hercules bids Amphitryon and Alcmene farewell; yet another nod to Mahler's Third Symphony (Scherzo this time) in "Go the Distance." For the closing "A True Hero" Menken combines "Go the Distance" and "I Won't Say" before letting the Muses reprise the hand-clapping, heaven-storming "A Star Is Born."

---

Back to Hercules

---