DAC 36: Mulan

Mulan - 8.3/10

Tee hee hee! Men are gross! That seems to be the prevailing source of "humor" in this film, and while some of it is genuinely funny, it does get old. There's also Eddie Murphy's anachronisms, and while he's certainly no Robin Williams, he pulls it off better than a lot of other attempts I've seen. What I mean to say is, the comic relief is nothing spectacular, but it's relatively enjoyable and I didn't hate it. I loved this movie as a kid and I still do. It doesn't have any glaring flaws like some films I could name (that I just watched), but its good points are just strong enough to make it a "good" movie and not quite a "great" movie.

Most of the songs are pretty blah, but I do really like "Be a Man". Or "Make a Man Out of You". Or whatever it's called. The misogynistic, patriarchal society wasn't played down nearly as much as you would expect in a Disney film; in fact they were pretty up front about it. Also, the ravages of war weren't glossed over quite as much as one might expect, either. At one instance we are treated to a field of corpses, albeit only for a moment. The villain, while being threatening and actually kind of badass, is pretty forgettable. It's actually justifiable in this case though as he's only really there to drive the plot. The real villain is the societal conventions of China itself. Mulan's victory comes not when she vanquishes the enemy leader, but when the Emperor bows to her and she is accepted for who she is, despite traditional prejudices. It's played well, since the conventions are so strong throughout the movie that even Mulan herself buys into them, so it is a very satisfying conclusion all around.

Okay, I lied. There was one thing that bugged me: the size of Mulan's army group keeps changing. When they're in the camp and during the training montage it seems like there might be a hundred or so of them. Then later when they're marching off to battle and singing about chicks, there might be a couple dozen. Once they're marching through the mountains that gets cut again to maybe a little more than one dozen, and by the time they're cowering from the avalanche there's maybe six or seven of them. What the hell, animators? But yeah, that one flaw, while kind of annoying, wasn't near enough to bring down the film, though I think it is something worth mentioning.

So while this film didn't wow me like Beauty and the Beast or Hunchback of Notre Dame, it was still a lot of fun and I really enjoyed watching it again.