Mulan

I haven’t seen a Disney movie in the theatre since The Great Mouse Detective back in 1986. After that I went through that period that we all go through at the age where we think Disney is just for kids. It took me until Aladdin in 92 to get out of the faze, and then I just watched them on video. I’ve never seen The Little Mermaid (never really had much desire to–way too much hype for a Disney movie) or Beauty And The Beast. Then, just as suddenly as they regained their grandeur, they lost it. They’ve had a real dry spell, lately. Let’s see, we’ve had Pocahontas (a badly animated bastardization of history–but Mel Gibson was in it), Hunchback Of Notre Dame (a well animated dry plotted movie–but Demi Moore, Kevin Kline, Tom Hulce, Jason Alexander and Charles Kimbrough were in it–what a cast!) and Hercules (a 90 minute commercial for Disney–but Danny Devito and James Woods were in it). Truth be told, I haven’t seen any of these down period movies. I never really had an urge to see any of them. Aladdin and The Lion King were too good to be followed by this stuff that no one really seemed to like.

But now there’s Mulan. My faith in Disney is restored again. This is one of the best movies they’ve put out in years.

The story is about a young Chinese girl whose father is supposed to fight the Huns as they invade China. The problem is that he is too old and weak to fight. Since the government won’t let him out of it Mulan decides to take her father’s armor and sword and fight for him. She cuts her hair and takes off for the base camp with her horse. This is punishable by death, so, when her family finds out, they just have to keep quiet. All they can do is pray to the ancestors who try to send a guiding spirit to bring her back. Instead they are forced to send Mushu (Eddie Murphy), a very small and almost pathetic (but very funny) dragon who has been demoted to gong ringer. The ancestors are also pretty funny, and one of them is voiced by none other than George Takei (Sulu from Star Trek for all you non-Trekkies out there).

At the camp, Mulan meets some new friends (of course). They aren’t very accepting to her at first because she inadvertently gets them all clean up duty. After a while, though, they come to accept the new recruit they know as Ping. Shang (B.D. Wong–and his singing voice comes from Mr. Teeth himself DONNY OSMOND!?!? They got the whitest guy they could, I guess), their captain and son of the army’s leader, is the “love interest” of the story. And what a strange one he is, too. We also have Yao (Harvey Fierstein in a strangely “manly” role), Ling (Gedde Watanabe, Donger from Sixteen Candles) and a whole bunch of other people who I don’t know.

Basically, Mulan stays to fight (Mushu decides to help her fight instead so that he can be promoted to Guardian again) with her friends and try to save China.

As with most of the new Disney movies there are a lot of modern references here, most of them from Mushu (he gets to act like Rambo at one point). The ancestors get in on the fun, too–during the celebration scene one of them is dancing like Travolta in Pulp Fiction. Who’da thunk it? Tarantino influencing Disney.

We also have a reference to their second animated feature: a cricket who doubles as a conscience! He doesn’t sing “When You Wish Upon A Star,” or talk at all actually, but he is pretty much Mushu’s conscience. (Pinnochio is still my favorite Disney movie, even though I fell asleep when I saw it as a kid in the theatre. Much better than Snow White.)

There’s also some really weird stuff going on here. First off, Mulan is a girl trying to pass herself off as a man. As time goes on and she’s still not found out Shang starts to almost look like he’s interested in her/him. Remember, this is before he knows she’s a girl. Then there’s old Harvey Fierstein prancing around. (Thanks to Mark (not myself–different Mark, what kind of a weirdo do you think I am?) for telling me about this before I went to see it. It’s fairly obvious, though, even if you weren’t looking for it.)

Then we’ve got a lot of sexual overtones going on. Stuff like Yao standing naked (we don’t see anything but his legs) on a rock saying “I am kind of the rock!” Think about it. There are a lot more lines like this that I bet the Disney people were secretly snickering over.

There are also a lot more “butts” than in other Disney movies. I don’t remember them saying “butt” too much in others, but Eddie says it at least three times. One of the better ones is when they about to attack some of the Huns. “Let’s go kick some Hunny buns!”

Then there’s the animation. Wow! I was really impressed. I noticed parts of it looked like they were rotoscoped (drawing over live action footage to make it look animated, like in The Hobbit and a lot of other Ralph Bakshi movies). That’s something I haven’t noticed in other Disney movies. The closest I can think of is, I think, parts of Anastasia were rotoscoped. (Disney may sue me for mentioning that movie in a review of one of their movies. Oh well. I don’t have anything for them to take from me.) The rest of the animation reminded me a little bit of Pocahontas. For this movie it’s not a bad thing. That one was really angular. Too many sharp angles for a movie about Native Americans and nature. This movie seemed to fit that style. They really toned down the angles, but there was something reminiscent there. It was really cool. A lot of parents were in an uproar because they gave the men nipples. I have one thing to say to them: GET OVER IT!!!! We’ve all got them, so why can’t we have them in cartoons? It looks weird without them. We all know that it was one of God’s little mistakes. We’ve all seen Time Bandits. But they’re there, so deal with it. It just goes to show you, it’s always something. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. They’ve got to find something to gripe about.

Those aren’t complaints. I like that kind of stuff in Disney movies. It keeps the parents interested and the kids wondering what their parents are laughing at. My complaints are more trivial. Such as when Mulan’s grandmother (voiced by the immortal June Foray–better known as Granny in the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons and Witch Hazel in a couple of Bugs Bunny cartoons) started to sing it was obvious that they changed voices. Suddenly, Grandmother Fa sounded 20 years younger and not as fun. Also, at the end when the leader of the Huns is in the Emperor’s palace (the Emperor, by the way, is voiced by the near-immortal Pat Morita) Mulan locks him in a room with Shang, who is knocked out. That’s about when a real life villain would have taken advantage of the situation. Mulan doesn’t think about that, though, because this is a Disney movie. And then there’s DONNY OSMOND!?!?!? What were they thinking?!?!?!

The Hun’s leader was a little weak, too. He didn’t seem too menacing. I guess he shouldn’t be since he’s a cartoon character in a kids’ movie, but Disney’s had much more frightening bad guys than this. The Witches in Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, Monstro in Pinnochio, Jafar in Aladdin, Shere Khan in The Jungle Book, Scar in The Lion King… We got to know all of them pretty well through the course of the movies. (Well, maybe not Monstro, but he was only a small part of the movie. But he made a great impression, though.) This guy we only saw in a couple of scenes and we were supposed to be frightened by him. I didn’t quite buy it. He was almost scary at the end, but not too much. I guess the point of the story was Mulan overcoming adversity, but we could’ve done with a better villain.

Anyway, this was a great movie. Boys will like the dragon and the fighting and girls will (hopefully) like the fact that a girl gets to kick some butt. It’s a good message for them. A good sign for me with animated movies is if I start to forget that I’m watching a bunch of drawings. There were times that I did with this one. I was interested in the story and most of the characters. If Disney makes Tarzan this good they could be on the verge of another Golden Age.

One of the best posters they’ve had in a long time, too.