The Amazing Feats of Young Hercules/Young Pocahontas
These films epitomize the bargain-basement schlock that gives  cartoons and children's entertainment a bad name. When Hercules is  assigned a  mere four labors as punishment for recklessly hurling thunderbolts,  he's  joined by Falina, a princess who's been turned into a sable. She tries  to be  comic but is merely obnoxious. Hercules defeats the Stymphalian birds, which  are drawn as robots, and the Hydra, a clumsy three-headed dragon. He  also  tangles with a Gorgon (borrowed from the legend of Perseus) and goes  after  some golden apples. The result is a pointless bore, despite the ham- handed  moralizing at the end.Pocahontas fares no better. A conventional Indian girl, she wants to  befriend a very silly John Smith, but the nasty medicine man insists  all  outsiders are evil. The songs by Megan Cavallari and David Goldsmith  barely qualify as doggerel: "Look out, strangers, for the Medicine Man /  I'm on the warpath and I have  a plan." In both films, the animation veers between  painfully inept and unintentionally comic.This DVD offers parents an effective new tool for curbing their kids'  media intake: given the choice between watching it or no TV at all,  most kids  will opt for the latter.--Charles Solomon