I didn't see this one until about a year after it came out, but I loved it immediately.
The movie is just great. I was at the height of my Barchy phase when I saw it, and Mulan has to be the epitome of female empowerment movies, so I adored it. It was really entertaining. Possibly a little too much humor for such a serious topic, and there weren't quite enough VAs, but what can you expect from a major corporation like Disney?
The story was a truly beautiful one about courage, honor, love, friendship, and all that good stuff. The characters were marvelous. Our heroine (Ming-Na Wen), Mushu (Eddie Murphy), and The Gang of Three are my favorites. Fa Zhou (Soon-Tek Oh) and the Emperor (Pat Morita) were really neat with their philosophical ways, Grandmother Fa (June Foray) was pretty humorous, and Shang is definitely my
favorite macho animan.
I wasn’t too impressed with the songs, but the score was kind of neat. I especially liked the part at the parade. But in this case, the rest of the movie made up for the music.
The animation was beautiful. I really loved the way they used the Chinese style smoke and Larissa will tell you that they were right in giving Mushu four fingers. There were a few problems with the CGI, but I forgive them (I seem to be repeating myself a lot on these pages).
Despite all of the good points, there were a few flaws. They, again, slaughtered the story (not to the point of Hercules, which should have been called Heracles, of course), but I’ve come to expect that and let it slide. And the whole point of the movie was about being yourself, yet that concept is not valued so much in Eastern cultures, and
especially not at the time period of the movie. Reading over what I have written, it sounds pretty critical. But it’s in my nature to be critical and if the stone dragon and the songs are the worst things I can come up with to pick at, then it must have been good. Over all, it was a magnificent movie with a fantastic message and not a one of the main female characters was a dingbat (< Jane Lane>BIG plus< /Jane Lane>).
Mulan was directed by Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft,
produced by Pam Coats, and written by Robert D. San Souci, Rita Hsiao, Chris Sanders, Philip LaZebnik, Raymond Singer, and Eugenia Bostwick-Singer. The score was composed by Jerry Goldsmith, the songs were written by Matthew Wilder, Vanessa-Mae Nicholson, and David Zippel, and it was based on a Chinese poem written by an anonymous author.
Thanks to Kavin Teter's Disney Clip Art Page for the pictures.
