There is nothing to match the gorgeous gravity-defying bouts in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Zhang Yimou’s Hero (which starred Jet Li), but Mulan will serve younger viewers as an exciting introduction to martial-arts cinema. On the plus side, Caro and her team have added some energetic wire-fu action sequences in which the combatants sprint up walls and across tiled rooftops, and the camera flips on its side to keep up with them. Mulan winces when a towel slips from the waist of a comrades-in-arms, but otherwise the film is even more coy than the cartoon was. Children may be put off by the sight of flaming boulders being catapulted through the sky at our beleaguered heroes, while teens may notice that the awkwardness of a woman sharing a dormitory and even a bed with a bunch of sweaty men is handled with chaste discretion. At times Mulan is almost a grown-up period drama, but ultimately it falls somewhere between two audiences. Caro and the screenwriters have gone for a humourless and even sombre tone, replacing all of the witty lines with portentous speeches about honour and loyalty. It seems unlikely that the Emperor would conscript a pensioner who can barely totter across a room without a walking stick, let alone charge into battle, but the film would have been a lot shorter if anyone had acknowledged that.įans of the cartoon will be dismayed to hear that the remake omits the songs, the jokes, and the talking dragon. To save him from certain death, Mulan disguises herself in his red armour and rides off to the army training camp where she pretends to be a man. The trouble is that the only man in Mulan’s family is her infirm father (Tzi Ma). But a band of Rouran raiders led by the scarred Bori Khan (Jason Scott Lee) keeps slaughtering Imperial troops, and so the Emperor (a dignified Jet Li) decrees that one man from every family in China must join his army. ‘This is Christopher Nolan’s Bond film’Īs in the cartoon, which was based in turn on a Chinese legend, a young woman named Mulan (Liu Yifei) lives with her family in an idyllic rural village where the clothes are all peasant-chic haute couture and the greatest danger she faces is being frowned at by the local matchmaker. Five stars for I’m Thinking of Ending Things But it’s best enjoyed if you’re expecting a solid tween movie rather than a monumental cinematic landmark. Niki Caro’s film is a well-constructed family-friendly wuxia drama, with bright colours, grand scenery, and commendable themes. The pressure is on for Mulan to be a staggering success, so I should say right away that, well, it isn’t. It is also the most expensive film ever to have a female director, the first Disney film to have an entirely Asian and Asian-American cast, and the first of Disney’s live-action remakes to have a PG-13 rating in the US. What’s more, this Mulan is being released after months of waiting – the original release date was March – and can be seen for a hefty extra charge on Disney’s new streaming platform, Disney+. Let’s move on to the live-action remake, which is in the unenviable position of being compared to its splendid predecessor. But that’s enough about the cartoon that came out in 1998. Disney’s Mulan is a masterpiece: entertaining, sparklingly funny, striking in its use of artistic angles and imagery, and bold in its feminism and its positive representation of Asian characters.
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