Mulan

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Disney once again took a bit of a turn for the dramatic with ‘Mulan’. Although it’s of course not nearly as dark as Hunchback, it does manage to balance out its light-hearted and serious moments in a much more effective manner. This combined with an epic soundtrack and great characters make this one of the better films of the late Renaissance era.

It has epic war sequences and a genuinely high stakes plot, but it’s also really funny at the same time, mostly thanks to Eddie Murphy’s outstanding performance as Mushu and the rather witty script.  

Something else that stands out about the film is that Mulan herself isn’t just a bland stereotype of a strong female character we’ve seen a million times – she genuinely feels like a real person with a real personality. Her misfit status could have come across as cliched, but there is something in the character that really makes it feel organic. And although there’s nothing to make him particularly memorable, Shan Yu is a passable villain, especially considering his relative lack of screen-time compared to many other Disney bad guys.

I’ve not even been able to mention the soundtrack yet, but there are some really good musical numbers in this film, with the stand out song of course being ‘I’ll Make A Man Out of You’. The epic music I referenced in my introduction primarily refers to that song and the fantastic score. By far the weakest song is ‘A Girl Worth Fighting For’. It’s fun and the tension it sets up in the next scene is fantastic, but overall it just feels a bit irrelevant to the plot and it goes on for just a bit too long.

One final note is that the film has some really nice animation, with the most impressive sequence by far being the battle against the Huns in the snow.

Overall, Mulan is a great film with fantastic characters, music and humour – it was definitely a high point of the Disney Renaissance. 

Ratings

Good guys: An impressively dynamic protagonist and great comic relief mean that the good guys get 8/10

Bad guys: Shan Yu makes for an appropriately threatening villain, meaning that the bad guys get 6/10

Animation: Some really great animation means that this category gets 7/10

Music: One of the coolest songs in Disney history and a truly epic score mean that the music gets 8/10

Plot: A stellar story gets 7/10

Overall score: 36/40

Next review: Tarzan