'Mulan' A Review

Mulan is a Disney historical/family/action movie a live-action adaptation of the 1998 animated version. In rural Imperial China Mulan(Liu Yifei) is an active brave young woman who is reprimanded as those attributes are not honorable for a female. When the Emporor decrees each family must contribute one man to the army Mulan takes the place of her lame father disguised as a boy. She makes friends and reveals her fighting abilities while in training and the army is premtively set against the invading force lead by Bori Kahn(Jason Scott Lee) and made virtually unstoppable by witch Xianniang(Gong Li).

Yifei is charming and charismatic and brings her certain amount of energy to the screen but fails to break out of the relatively simplistic, flat, and rushed story the script provides. The supporting cast is filled with wonderful performers- always a treat to see Lee especially here he is at his leering, swaggering worst(best) as the heavy, Donnie Yen and Jet Li(as Commander Tung and The Emperor respectively) also always a delight, and the list goes on unfortunately none of them are given much to do nor time to do it.

Beautifully shot, with some intriguing action sequences but ultimately bland to the point of the banal. With such a stacked cast and rich subject matter Disney once again plays it to safe with it's live-action remakes of it's own catalog. The movie moves too fast, says too little, and leaves basically all it's characters as opaque outlines. This is not to mention the various controversies already associated with it. Leaving that aside it certainly is transparently catering to the Chinese box office and as a result of that deliberate calculation erodes its potential. A brilliant piece of business on paper, a movie that is only worth watching in the background while folding laundry.

Available for an additional fee on Disney+, available as part of the regular Disney+ subscription come December.

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