Don Harlow reviews Mulan

The Chinese seem to like stories about plucky girls disguising themselves as boys to do the jobs that society thinks they should avoid.

Would you believe, one of the working titles for this film was “China Doll”?

Actually, the heroine Mulan (Wen Ming-na), though belonging to the important Fa family, behaves more like a farm girl, though a bright one (she gets the dog to feed the chickens for her). That’s why, I suppose, the poor kid can’t get a husband — that and the fact that her mother, grandmother and matchmaker won’t let her get within hailing distance of an eligible man without passing their cosmetics-and-mincing tests first, something that (with the aid of a “lucky” cricket) she just can’t do. So, luckily, when the Huns under villainous general Shan Yu (Miguel Ferrer) come swarming over the Great Wall she is free to steal her sick father’s armor, sword and conscription scroll, bind up her hair into a knob and her bosom into absolute flatness, and go off to join the army and fight, along with her lucky cricket, a faithful steed, and a family-guardian dragonlet named, cutely, Mushu (Eddie Murphy).

The Chinese seem to like stories about plucky girls disguising themselves as boys to do the jobs that society thinks they should avoid (see also “Liang Shan-po and Chu Yin-tai” aka “The Butterfly Lovers”). Mulan manages to maintain this unlikely masquerade through the most unlikely of circumstances, including skinny-dipping parties with her comrades Yao (Harvey Fierstein), big Chien-po (Jerry Tondo) and Ling (Gedde Watanabe). Luckily her commanding officer, Li “Hunk” Shang (B.D. Wong, except when singing, when he is Donny Osmond) apparently can’t see a bright light through a pane of glass; and when her femininity is finally revealed through a lapse in doctor-client confidentiality, he, outraged, abandons her in the trackless mountains, despite the fact that she has, pretty much single-handedly, destroyed the entire Hun army for him. Down but not out, Mulan trails after her comrades and, faced with a plot by General Shan and a few surviving and oversized but not half-bright minions to seize the emperor, succeeds in saving China, with a little help from her friends.

Potpourri paragraph technically, not too many advances over previous Disney cartoons. The same computerized crowd animations used in “Hunchback” two years ago are seen in the Imperial City, and a somewhat more impressive variant is used to show the attacking Huns in the mountains near the Imperial City ⁽¹⁾. Jerry Goldsmith’s musical score did not impress me greatly, but on the other hand it was low-key enough not to jar the viewer. James Hong gives his usual delightfully prissy performance as the voice of Imperial Envoy Chi Fu. Pat Morita is less recognizable as The Emperor. Disney’s not-totally-disrespectful treatment of ancestor worship may well draw the ire of what Isaac Bonewits calls “the religious reich”. The cricket and Mushu are fairly decent Mandatory Good Cute Animals; Shan Yu’s malicious falcon is O.K. as a Mandatory Bad Animal, though the roasting scene seemed a little out of character (unlike Jafar’s parrot in Aladdin, Shan Yu’s falcon doesn’t have much to say).

All in all, a fun film, far more so than last year’s Hercules, which — after Kevin Sorbo and Michael Hurst — I found very disappointing. I look forward to next year’s Tarzan, though if Disney turns Kerchak and Terkoz into cutie-pies, I will be pissed. ⁽²⁾

⁽¹⁾ The Huns, or Hiung-nu, to the best of my knowledge never came particularly near that part of China we think of as “China” — the eastern provinces — except, occasionally and individually, as mercenaries or tourists; they mostly depredated on the borders of the Western territories that are today collectively known as Xinjiang province. See e.g. Inoue Yasushi’s historical novels Loulan and Foreigner.

⁽²⁾ Rumor has it, however, that Terkoz — who gave Tarzan his crimson-glowing forehead scar in a royal Battle to the Death — has been recast as his Good Buddy and given a woman’s voice.

Postnote: the poem that “inspired” this movie is posted in several languages at Disney’s website, but I never believe anything until I see the Esperanto translation. Luckily, I found a copy on my bookshelf (Saint-Jules ZEE, El Ĉina Poezio, Beijing El Popola Ĉinio, 1980). There are a few differences (the English version assures us that Mulan rode “ten thousand miles” to reach the war; according to the Esperanto version that was “ten thousand li”, which, given that one li is about half a kilometer, seems more reasonable). But in both cases the main part of the movie takes place between the two lines of a single couplet in the middle of the poem. Don Harlow, June 27, 1998 08:11 AM

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