This review can be found on the WWW at Bookhouse's Previews of Upcoming Movies (http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/3181/mulan.html)
MULAN
Reviewed by Greg Dean Schmitz
I went into Mulan with high expectations, due mostly to the sweeping ads we've been seeing for months, and my own hopes that Disney could make an animated movie that didn't talk down to the audience, and I wasn't disappointed. Mulan matches all expectations and exceeds them, returning to the qualities that we can see in Disney's classic era of animated films, sitting alongside Snow White and the Seven Dwarves as one of Disney's best ever. The key to Disney's success in the animated-musical field has always been their ability to market their films to both children and to the grown-ups who will take the children to the movie. With Mulan, Disney ups this angle quite a bit by instead making a grown-up movie that the kids can like as well, rather than the other way around.
Mulan succeeds because it never talks down to the audience, and doesn't paint needless stereotypes or use stock characters in unoriginal ways. Mulan features a wide smorgasboard of great supporting characters, none of which over-dominate the film, and all of which give us just enough entertainment to leave us thirsty for more of them. This applies to everyone from Mulan's dog, Mulan's grandmother, and the cricket she gives Mulan, Mulan's ancestors (including a great voice-over from George Takei), Mulan's comrades-in-arms, Mulan's captain, the barbarian bad-guy, and many more. All of the supporting characters are there to support Mulan, letting her shine, and she does, as a truly heroic female character who does not rely on old stereotypes to win our hearts. She's not a tom-boy, she's not a egg-head, she's not shy, she's not egotistic; Mulan is as close as Disney has ever come to having a believable, human character, and she is also Disney's first true hero who succeeds on her own terms and her own merits. She succeeds not because she reacts to the events of her life, she succeeds because she is the active figure driving the whole story, in exciting, thrilling scenes, and well-considered character scenes. Finally, there is Eddie Murphy as Mushu, who provides nice measured amounts of comic relief and cute asides to Mulan (and us) that give this drama just enough humor to please us all.
The film works as well because the story and art work together to give us an unified vision of a China that melds smoothly with what we might already know, without painting wild, offensive stereotypes, and without Westernizing the characters. Mulan goes against tradition with the full knowledge that it could mean her own death in several ways, but she does it not out of heroic pride, but out of the driving need to protect the family honor. This theme, and the plot and character elements that instill it all appear to be firmly loyal to legends and traditions that you can see in many of the great Chinese and Japanese film classics, such as The Seven Samurai. Finally, the art and music works in Mulan in smooth ways we've not seen from Disney in over 30 years. There is a smoothness to the characters, the backgrounds and the musical numbers that melts evenly from scene to scene. Musical numbers in other Disney films often seem forced, but in Mulan, they come and go nearly without us noticing, and they all make perfect sense within the story, adding a lot to the story. A favorite of mine, in particular, is a musical number about halfway through that features the soldiers singing about how much women love fighting men, as the number is done in Chinese-character style calligraphical art, and it really works.
For somehow combining elements of Asian legend, stirring action, inticing and vibrant characters, and somehow making a film that can appeal to nearly anyone in any family, Mulan very quickly earns it's place as possibly the best film Disney studios has ever made, and certainly the best in their last 30 years. If you and your family see only one movie this Summer, Mulan could be that movie.
Greg Dean Schmitz Bookhouse's Previews of Upcoming Movies http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/3181/ bookhouse@geocities.com
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