Mulan

Continuing Disney's trend of venturing to other countries during the 90's, Mulan takes us to China where we come across one of my favourite heroines of this era, if not out of all the canon films.

Once again our film has a really strong opening. Not only do we get a good sense of who Mulan is but we also get a great feel for her world and how it works. We learn that honour is a really important factor in their lives, which is something that will be in play for the entire film and influence people and how they act. The opening remains quite strong right up until we encounter Mushu, which is where things give a small stumble. With that said, the rest of the film still carries itself quite well and has a lot of strong points especially when we get to spend some time with our villain, Shan-Yu.

This is one of those films where we get a rather enjoyable cast of characters. We get a really strong heroine in the form of Mulan who wants to bring honour to her family and protect her father, which is also a trait evident in our main hero Shang who also wishes to bring honour to his father by being a good general. Shan-Yu is a rather surprising villain given how ruthless he is. At two points in the film we see that he's willing to go out of his way to destroy anyone, even if there's a safer path for him to take towards his ultimate goal. Our sidekick's are generally where mileage may vary. Mulan's friends in the army can be entertaining and balance each other fairly well, playing their part quite nicely, however it's Mushu where things go bad. This is a character who I simply can't stand. Unlike our heroine, he is largely motivated in getting his promotion back to being a guardian and really comes across as if he's only in it for himself instead of helping Mulan for the sake of being there for there. It also doesn't help that his voice actor, Eddie Murphy, is rather abrasive.

The songs in this film are actually quite good, quite a few of them are memorable enough to remember even after the film has ended. The one stand out song that is easily my favourite is Reflection, which really helps to show Mulan's motivation as she expresses herself and the imagery that accompanies it is really well done. The rest of the songs are quite fun, Make A Man Out of You is quite likely the other big song that really stands out from the rest and is a lot of fun to sing along to.

One final thing to note, is that the animation here is really well done and only seems to have improved since Pocahontas while still keeping a rather unique visual style just as Hercules did.

4 1/2 /5