And so, we come to Mulan, a film where our heroine mentions on precisely one occasion that she thinks her commander is hot, and he can't bring himself to murder her for being a woman. Clearly, They Should Totally Be Together, forever!!! ♥
But, let's try to focus on what might differentiate Mulan's story from those of previous Disney Princesses. (Yeah, apparently she's marketed as part of THAT nonsense, even though she wasn't born a princess, and Shang's merely a high-ranking military dude. Perhaps a bunch of royalness just rubbed off on her when she unwelcomely hugged Emperor Pat Morita?) Like, um....well, I guess her parents don't yell very much, now do they? They're still too ignorant to understand why she's "different", but they're ignorantly supportive, at least. And....I suppose her foolishly foolish act of fool's rebellion that only a foolish fool would foolishly conceive of, foolishly, was not done so much for selfishly selfish reasons, as it was done to help her family, selfishly. It's interesting to note that her foolhardy adventure requires a lot more preparation than previous characters in similar situations, too; consequently, by the end of it, it doesn't seem so dumb after all. Let's take Ariel for a counterpoint - even though it ultimately ended Happily Ever After, I never got any impression that she was anything other than, well, kind of a naïve idiot. But Mulan's pretty bright. And that's probably a positive change!
And yet, this movie might be less likeable than The Little Mermaid. I could blame this on all sorts of things - weird pacing, uncomfortable bouts of sexism that seem to defy the feminist message, Eddie Murphy - but it comes down to the fact that Mulan is WAAAAAAAAY out of TLM's league on a musical level. Jerry Goldsmith's score sounds adequately Chinese-as-recognizable-by-a-Western-audience, but when we start getting into the actual songs, well....Matthew Wilder and David Zippel are no Ashman and Menken. (Hence the different names.) Their work here gives the bizarre sensation that they're just going down a checklist of "essential" elements of Disney songs, crossing off the items one by one as they're assembled into soulless, inorganic music golems. (Google Chrome spellcheck insists that, by "golems", I clearly meant "Togolese".) Melodically, they're nice enough, but the rhymes, for instance, have a consistent air of perfunctoriness. There's always something disconcerting about listening to a song that practically seems to be telling you, subtextually, "Here's your fucking rhyme, now get off my back already." ("I'll Make a Man Out of You" seems to especially suffer from such phoned-in rhymes, sidetracking what would've otherwise been a great song.)
To give credit where I suppose it's due, though, Christina Aguilera's poppy cover of "Reflection" in the credits is probably one of the less egregiously awful poppy Disney singles to play over the credits in recent memory. Maybe there actually IS some sort of person in there, beneath all the Aguilerity.
But let's talk about Mulan's gross relationship with Shang. It's probably one of the most confusing and unromantic romances in recent Disney memory! Okay, so, it's kind of cute when he has this weird, subtle, inexplicable attraction to her when she's still "Ping". That's probably as close as we'll ever get to even vaguely implied hardcore gay action in the Disney canon, so I'll just take what I can get! Anyway, after "Ping" is revealed as a lady, it's harder to understand why she still likes the guy. Because he didn't murder her? Why, if I fell madly in love with everyone who didn't murder me, well, I'd have pretty much no time left to do other things that make me miserable! Because he's very slightly less sexist than the others? But he still looks down on her and almost lets Emperor Pat Morita die as a result! And then, though we're asked to see it as a sweet moment that cements their totally-in-love-and-together-forever-ness....forever, I can't really see Shang's visit to Mulan and Mama Fa and Papa Fa at the end of the movie as anything other than him fulfilling a simple duty because Emperor Pat Morita told him to. (Papa Fa's, incidentally, is the world's foremost Chinese pizza chain, as I'm sure you're already aware.)
But this is just indicative of a more common problem that Disney never seems capable of grasping. When you insist on having, say, a strong woman as your main character, someone whose strength and independence and general sense of self comes from her being, essentially, a modern character plopped into a past time period, and she spends the entire film standing up to the oppressive societal norms of her era, it comes across as nothing short of character assassination to then have her forgive all of that at the drop of a hat. Their films seem to do this a lot, to varying degrees, presenting strong and brave and wonderful women who stand up for what they believe in - which is good! - and then "rewarding" them by allowing them to realise their place in society and throw all of that away by marrying an asshole who doesn't even have to atone for his assholishness beforehand - which is bad! They do it a lot, but it seems especially egregious here!
Rounding out the film are some typically bizarre casting choices for comic relief characters. Eddie Murphy and Harvey Fierstein are totally Chinese, y'all! (The choice of Fierstein makes more sense when he joins his army buddies in crossdressing for the finale, I suppose.) Mushu, in particular, is polarizing - he's essentially Eddie Murphy, and if you enjoy seeing Eddie Murphy Eddie Murphyin' it all up in here, then you're bound to love the little fella. But it's fundamentally hard to tell the difference between him and a certain other wacky talking animal critter he's known for, at least vocally. (Confusing the matter even further, if I recall correctly, they ended up having Donkey fuck a dragon, resulting in biologically baffling crossbreeds!) I didn't much care for his Murphyisms here, though I suppose it didn't help that they mostly come as a weird tonal shock right after rather serious things happening to Mulan. Really? They couldn't smooth out the transition a little better? But, to give some credit in an attempt to seem reasonable, Mushu's character design and long, floppy expressiveness was pretty much spot-on. There's just something about the way Eddie Murphy talks that makes it seem like he SHOULD be flailing around and bouncing off the walls, isn't there?
Yeah, if you couldn't tell, I wasn't really wild about Mulan, but I have to wonder if that's solely because of the faults of the film itself, or if it's two months of burnout when it comes to the Disney Renaissance formula. (Or maybe I just didn't smoke enough wild dagga beforehand.) Whatever the case, at the very least, this was probably more racially sensitive than Pocahontas? That's something, right? Maybe?
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| Teenage girls are literally the WORST. |
TERRIBLY TERRIBLE AND AWFULLY AWFUL AND WORTHLESSLY WORTHLESS DIRECT-TO-DVD DISNEY SEQUEL OF THE WEEK: Being a respected army general, Shang is sent off to Paris to command his country's army in the French-Chinese War; out of sheer loneliness, his foolish fool of a wife follows him without his permission. Thus, the stage is set for Mulan III: Mulan Rouge!. In Paris, she befriends Pierre du Croissant (Hal Sparks), a hack writer who had been struggling for years, but her loveliness finally inspires him to write a wildly successful cabaret revue, using popular Radio Disney songs from centuries in the future! Naturally, Mulan relishes in her newfound vicarious fame, oblivious to the fact that Pierre has fallen in love with her. It's only too late that she realises the truth - by this time, she has also caught the eye of the King of France, Duke Jacques Baguetteman (Diedrich Bader), and she gets stuck in the middle of an ugly fight between the two. Finally deciding she's had enough, she consults the famous French wizard, Tuberculo (Rondell Sheridan), for assistance in breaking her contract as Pierre's muse; alas, he is more interested in simply locking her up so he can gradually absorb her life energy and become stronger than ever. When Shang hears of this, he's furious at her; nonetheless, he teams up with Pierre and King Duke Jacques in a climactic final battle to take down Tuberculo, and Tuberculo's sis (Olivia Holt), once and for all! In the end, Mulan learns the important lesson that, as a married woman, she can no longer be ambitious without her husband's permission, for it is dishonourable; and the two reconcile over a romantic candlelit frog platter atop the Eiffel Tower. (Meanwhile, in an unrelated subplot, Mushu has wacky adventures about town with Yao in drag, as is his wont.)
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