36. Mulan (1998)

Mulan is kind of like a midway point between the styles of Aladdin and Hercules and The Lion King and The Hunchback of Notre Dame: the story is relatively serious, with some dark moments, but is mostly light-hearted, with a strong emphasis on humour. While this gives Mulan a greater sense of narrative purpose than Hercules and the moments of levity feel more appropriate than in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, it does leave it feeling a little confused as to what it really wants to be: a drama with comic elements, or a comedy with a little action thrown in. The result is a good, but somewhat uncertain movie.

As usual for the Renaissance, the animation is very good, it’s nice and smooth and energetic, but perhaps a little unremarkable; while I certainly wouldn’t wish to suggest that the animation here is lazy, as like I said it is very well done, it doesn’t really match any of the previous Renaissance films, save for Pocahontas and maybe The Little Mermaid. While there’s nothing wrong with Mulan focusing on areas other than animation, it’s just a little disappointing because before this, the animation for the Renaissance films seemed to just keep getting better and better, with Hercules not really taking any steps forward in terms of animation quality, and this debatably taking a step back. Still, it’s a small step and a small complaint, the animation is still great. The art style is also a little more simplified, it’s similar to that of Pocahontas with its sharper, less detailed character designs, softer lines and use of colour; however, Mulan’s characters are still given enough of the Disney animated style to afford them an appropriate level of personality and identity, unlike the stilted and lifeless characters of Pocahontas, who had difficulty conveying any sense of emotion or individuality. The backgrounds are decent, if nothing special, there is some good use of wide open space and some very nice natural landscapes, but they don’t really stand out. Mulan is hardly one of Disney’s greatest works of animation, but it’s good nonetheless.

SYMBOLISM SYMBOLISM SYMBOLISM
okay you guys get that?

After the rather basic and derivative narrative of Hercules, Mulan thankfully returns to what it seems was the mission statement of the earlier Renaissance films – to take traditional Disney storylines and tropes and present them in a different way. Once again, Mulan attempts to tackle some of the perceived sexism of the early Disney movies by deconstructing gender roles and reinventing the idea of the female protagonist in their films. Mulan doesn’t approach this with nearly the amount of subtlety as Beauty and the Beast, it’s a lot more obvious about what it’s trying to say and though this at times can dampen the effectiveness of its point, I suppose it was a point that had to be made. While the ideas of reinventing the idea of the Disney heroine and variations on the “don’t judge a book by its cover” and “always be yourself” morals were getting a little stale at this point, Mulan does manage to add something new to the mix. Though we have already seen Disney heroines who are more active and not simply damsels in distress, like Belle and female characters who refuse to simply be a love interest for a male character, such as Jasmine, Meg and... well, Belle, again, Mulan is the first who’s allowed to be a real action hero. While Belle takes her life into her own hands and rejects Gaston, it is Beast who must eventually defeat him and while Jasmine and Meg challenge what is expected of them and refuse to simply be a prize to be won by the male hero, they still need to be saved by their respective male heroes in the climax. In the climax of Mulan, it is Mulan and not her male counterpart who directly defeats the villain, saves the day and is rewarded with glory; though there are some issues raised in the aftermath that I’ll get to later, this is nice to see, even if Mulan herself isn’t necessarily as interesting as some of the aforementioned characters.

Though the film rubs its message in your face a little too often, it avoids suffering the same fate as Pocahontas by injecting a lot of humour into its approach, avoiding things from ever getting too preachy. The male characters’ views towards women are never explored with much depth or intelligence, but are at times portrayed as laughably arbitrary, in order to show just how ridiculous they are; compare this to Pocahontas, where the main villain’s insane racism and completely arbitrary prejudice towards Native Americans is equally as laughable, but portrayed with complete sincerity (save for one funny line) and it’s pretty clear which film works better. Personally, I think satire is often more effective when approached from a humorous stand-point than from a serious one – if you can get your audience to laugh at something, then it’s a lot easier to get them to see just how silly that something really is, deflating any power it once had. While there are of course exceptions to this rule, I certainly think that animated movies which feature talking trees and dragons voiced by Eddie Murphy are more suited to a humorous style of satire. Although Mulan doesn’t utilise this as much as it could, it’s interesting to note just how adult its humour can get; things are never explicit or inappropriate, but for Disney’s standards, some of these jokes are pretty risqué: for example, when the men are about to bathe with Mulan, who they still think is a man, Mushu laments ‘We’re doomed! There are couple of things I know they’re bound to notice!’ These moments play well with the gender politics the film is trying to discuss and honestly, some of them are actually pretty funny.

Mulan in: For Your Eyes Only

Though she plays an unfamiliar role for a Disney heroine, Mulan herself doesn’t have much of a personality besides being a bit of a klutz, but even so, there’s something very likeable about her; she means well, but isn’t really very good at many of the things she’s trying to do, but eventually she learns to grow into who she is and take advantage of the things she is good at. She can at times suffer from that familiar Disney protagonist problem of somewhat being overshadowed by her supporting cast, but it’s not nearly as bad as in say, Hercules. While not one of Disney’s great heroines, Mulan is at least not passive, as she is driven, takes charge of her life and refuses to be defined by societal norms, she’s a perfectly serviceable main character – it’s just a shame that for all her talk about how she wishes she was allowed to be herself and let her own personality shine, she doesn’t really seem to have that much of a personality to show. Shang on the other hand is a typical boring male love interest; though he is a bit sterner than his predecessors, this hardly does much to endear him to the audience. Though not necessarily unlikeable, he just doesn’t really have much to him, he is simply dull.

Mulan and Shang’s romance, if you can even call it that, is handled very shoddily; though they do spend most of the film together, you don’t really get to see them interact much, in fact, they never even have a conversation that lasts for more than a couple of lines. Most of their warming up to one another seemingly occurs off-screen, meaning that their last minute hook-up at the end of the film comes out of nowhere and kind of takes you for surprise, it seems unnecessary and ill-suited and raises some unfortunate questions; if they were simply comrades before, with no real hint of mutual attraction, why does Mulan suddenly being a woman change their entire (mostly non-existent) relationship within the space of about ten minutes? While giving Mulan a love interest doesn’t inherently negate the feminist message the film is trying to get across, the fact that their relationship is given so little attention, seems to change so vastly so suddenly and appears to be thrown in at the last minute just because every Renaissance film needed a romance, does kind of undermine the movie’s purpose. If the whole point of the film is Mulan’s journey of self-discovery, proving to both herself and all of China that women can do anything men can do and can achieve much greater things than simply being someone’s bride, then this is somewhat complicated by the fact that the end of the movie, Mulan’s greatest prize seems to be the fact that she is quite clearly going to become Shang’s bride. Yes, she saves the Emperor and earns the respect of him and her family and it’s obvious that’s what’s supposed to be most important, but even if the romance with Shang only slightly damages this point, why have it there if it’s going to damage it at all? The climax is still focused on Mulan and her achievements, thankfully, but this poorly developed and quite frankly unbelievable romance hurts the movie more than it helps it, even if only by a little.

Mulan and Shang, seen here in a scene from a Looney Tunes cartoon

By all logic Mushu should get on my nerves, as he fits a lot of qualities of “The Hooter”: he’s a goofy, non-human sidekick, he’s clumsy, he’s selfish, he’s a loudmouth, he’s ineffectual, he screws up and brings Mulan trouble more often than he helps her and his being voiced by Eddie Murphy is also a rather transparent attempt at recreating the magic of the Genie... and yet somehow I really quite like him! Maybe it’s all down to Eddie Murphy’s spirited performance, but there’s something about Mushu I just really enjoy watching, he definitely takes from a lot of other Disney sidekick characters: Sebastian, Genie, Timon, Hugo, Phil, the list goes on and he’s very obviously a mascot character designed to sell merchandise but I dunno, for some reason, he worked for me. Yao, Ping and Chien-Po are almost like The Three Stooges in the way their triple act is set up, they are pretty standard comic relief and don’t really get enough time to be much else, but they’re not obnoxious or anything so it’s not really a problem; other comic relief characters like Chi-Fu are more abrasive, but not excessively so. Shan-Yu doesn’t really have much of a personality beyond just being brutal, but to be honest, it’s kind of refreshing; Disney villains tend to be very theatrical and devious, more often than not they are rather weak and cowardly (particularly in the Renaissance era) or at least not physically imposing and rely more on their cunning and silver tongues to get what they want. It’s interesting then to have a villain who is defined so greatly by his physicality and fearlessness; Shan-Yu is like a force of nature, he doesn’t speak very often, but when he does, his words are chilling and powerful – he knows only to speak when he has something to say. He’s not a very complex villain, but Shan-Yu serves his role perfectly as an unstoppable killing machine, someone who simply cannot be matched physically, meaning only Mulan – with her guile and intellect – can defeat him.

The songs are few, but mostly memorable; their use of a deliberately Western interpretation of Asian culture and music kind of reminds me of old Gilbert and Sullivan musicals like The Mikado, though substantially less offensive. “Honour to Us All” is a decent song, if nothing special, the lyrics make an attempt at a witty jab at the concept of matchmaking, but don’t really succeed; the tune also gets a little grating and, while it might’ve worked better later on, considering this is the very first song in the film, it really should be something more grandiose. “Reflection” is the “Whole New World Number” and not a bad one; the lyrics are a little on-the-nose, but the concept is an intelligent one, the framing of the scene is excellent and the song doesn’t overstay its welcome. “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” is certainly the best of the lot, it’s a strong and confident song (appropriate, considering its subject) that wonderfully marries music, narrative, characterisation and pacing in precisely the way a musical number should and some of the rhymes are a lot of fun. The only problem is that the song skips over all of Mulan’s training, which is good in terms of pacing the story, but unfortunate considering that this could’ve been used to show Mulan’s development as a character, as well as the development of her relationships with Shang and her newfound friends; their sudden kindness and acceptance, as well as Mulan’s newfound competence, seem a little jarring considering where things started out before the song. To continue on this tangent, I personally feel that the training camp should’ve taken up the majority of the movie – this is really where we could’ve got to know Mulan and her comrades as characters, where we could’ve had her and Shang develop a romance, where we could’ve had a lot more opportunities for gags where Mulan has to hide her femininity; instead we skip over all these interesting ideas so we can rush Mulan into a big action scene. It’s disappointing, as I think this could’ve made for a much more interesting, character based film, but whatever; to get back on point, the song is great. 

‘I will play this exact same role three years later in Shrek, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me!!!’

“A Girl Worth Fighting For” sounds perhaps the most like a Gilbert and Sullivan or Rodgers and Hammerstein number, a very fun song with some funny lyrics: ‘How ‘bout a girl who’s got a brain, who always speaks her mind?’ ‘...Nah.’ Perhaps the best part of the song is the abrupt ending, which features the most awkward cut since the death of Bambi’s mother is followed by jovial birds singing. This time things are flipped around as the chirpy and light-hearted song is suddenly interrupted by the image of a entire village burned to the ground by the Huns; this is a fantastic use of the musical format to play with audience expectations and create drama, in a way I have rarely seen done elsewhere, truly a very powerful moment.

On the whole, Mulan is an enjoyable and well-constructed film, though one lacking a little in substance. It succeeds enough in what it is trying to accomplish to be considered satisfying, but not enough to be emotionally involving; the characters are decent, but underdeveloped, the story is good, but the aspects that have the potential to be the most interesting are underutilised, the songs are fun, but too few and somewhat poorly placed. Mulan is by no means a bad film, or even an average one, at any other point in Disney history I would probably consider it very good indeed, but at the tail end of the Renaissance, we’ve seen these kinds of ideas done a little too often and too often, better. 

Other Thoughts:

• When Mulan suits up to go off to war, it plays like a scene from a goofy 80’s action movie, complete with this hilariously inappropriate synth music, it’s amazing. 

‘Groovy’

• I usually don’t like “modern day anachronisms in the Ancient World” gags but I gotta admit, this one is pretty funny.

He just looks so pleased

7/10

Next Week: Tarzan!

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