Mulan - Review

With the live-action remake of Mulan coming right around the corner, I thought this would be a perfect time to revisit the animated original from 1998. Now I didn't grow up with Mulan at all and I had only seen it once when I was around 16 years old. How does it hold up now without any nostalgia attached to it. To be honest, it's one of those movies where you can go down 'the list' and insert 'it's okay' beside it, and that's your review. How are the characters, they're okay. How is the story, it's okay. How is the comedy? It's okay. How are the songs? They're okay. How You see what I mean? It's tough because you can only say 'it's okay' so many times.

Well here, let's start with the positives. I really enjoy the scope of the movie. The backgrounds and some of the shots in this movie are really fantastic. And the action scenes are quite exciting as the choreography and set-pieces are very well done.

However, to me that just makes the movie that much more frustrating because I see Mulan as missed opportunity. To me, I see many movies as a cake. The three main layers being story, character and emotion. The icing on the cake is the action and comedy. This movie is a tasty piece of cake... but the slice is so small that it left me wanting more.

I like Mulan as a character because she defies expectations and she loves her family and is willing to go undercover and go to war to protect them. However, I feel like the movie rushed through the first act and we didn't really get a sense of who Mulan really is. Sure, we see her do some brave things that make us like her, but I feel like there was more of an opportunity to go deeper and explore her more. Because other than those two elements I listed previously, she's not very interesting outside of that.

What doesn't help is that the villain of the movie, Shan Yu, is one of the most boring forgettable Disney villains of all time. I don't know a single thing about him, what he wants and desires, his motivation for his actions, his backstory, nothing. Not only that, but he doesn't even have any features that make him stand out. He's not comedic like Jafar or Hades, and the only distinct thing about him is his eyes. That's it.

So we have a main character who we can get behind, but isn't the most interesting, a villain who is completely forgettable, and a story that is rather thin. Just a character trying to break down gender roles and find bravery. Which can work! But if the imminent threat actually felt more urgent and larger, I feel like it would have strengthened Mulan's sacrifice. Start slower, build up Mulan more, build up the threat more, and now we have a larger mountain to climb in terms of the plot, but also with Mulan's inner character arc.

On top of that, we have Mushu as comedic relief and while I did laugh at a couple of his lines, he feels so out of place. The comedy while funny on it's own, I feel distracts from the overall message and story. It's hard to get invested in the character arc with Mulan when I keep hearing Eddie Murphy's voice. It's like putting ice cream and BBQ sauce in a blender. Both great... just not well together.

Overall, Mulan is a fine movie. There isn't anything completely terrible in the movie, I just saw this as a missed opportunity for something great.