BEFORE: I hope this isn't too startling of a transition, going from a violent adult anti-pedophile drama to an animated film for kids. The way I look at it, it makes some sense because in "Hard Candy" a teen girl dressed a certain way in order to fool and defeat a sexual predator, and in "Mulan" a teen girl dressed a certain way to fool and defeat an army. Makes sense?
This one's available on Netflix now, and I've got to start chipping away at my watchlist there, because I just built it up again based on the new September releases, plus some romances that I think might help me make connections come February. Now I've got about 133 films and stand-up specials on that list, and I'm only planning on watching one of those films in November.
Sandra Oh carries over from "Hard Candy".
THE PLOT: While preparing for their wedding, Shang and Mulan are suddenly sent off on a secret mission. Mushu starts to meddle, and a surprise attack by Mongolians doesn't help either.
AFTER: This was one of those Disney direct-to-video sequels from the 2000's decade, and you can just sort of feel that the company just didn't put the same effort into the sequels that they did on the original films. The story is smaller and so less important, you might wonder why they even bothered. In the first "Mulan" film, the Huns were invading China, and Mulan's father got drafted, leading her to disguise herself as a man and train in the army in his place. There was the threat of execution if her identity was discovered, the Huns attacked the Emperor, etc - the stakes were very high, that's my point.
Here in the sequel, Mulan and Shang have to escort three princesses to another kingdom, so they can marry three princes. That's it - big deal. They tried to put a twist on it by bringing back the "Gang of Three" recruits from the first film (Yao, Ling and Chien-Po) and allowing the princesses to fall for them, but there's no sense of urgency, nothing that leads us to believe that the stakes are high - we just have the Emperor's say-so that this is important for the future of the kingdom, and what if he's wrong? Mulan falls just short of telling him that arranged marriages are very wrong, but that's a modern-day attitude, back then they were just par for the course, right?
There's nothing specifically wrong with an arranged marriage, right? I mean, we still have them today in some cultures. OK, maybe they're not for everyone, but if somebody's having no success finding love, maybe they come in handy for those people. We shouldn't cast judgment on other cultures that do this just because our society supposedly believes that people should only marry for love, when we know that there are many other possible motivations, too, even if people don't talk about it.
They got most of the cast from the original back together, but not Eddie Murphy - I figured probably he declined to do a sequel video, but the IMDB trivia section explained that he was doing the "Shrek" sequels at this time, and his contract with Dreamworks prevented him from working for Disney. They cast a sound-alike actor in his place as Mushu, which probably saved Disney a ton of money.
The Mushu character provides some of the conflict here, since his job in the Chinese pantheon is threatened if Mulan gets married, then her husband's family elders would take over responsibility for her. What? The whole point of the first film was that women are also capable, they can serve in the military and the patriarchal attitudes in Chinese society were very misplaced. But the ghosts of the afterlife still watch over their MALE descendants first, and wives don't really count? Didn't the elders get the memo? This part of the plot is not only very out-of-step with the point of the film, it also feels very contrived, that they had to come up with some motivation to turn one of the supporting characters into a partial villain.
The film also can't seem to decide if it's a good thing or a bad thing that the two people in a relationship have different points of view. First it's a very good thing, there's even a whole song about it, and then once Mushu sows the seeds of doubt, it's a very bad thing. Men don't like to ask for directions! Women don't like to read maps! Is this a Disney film or a stand-up routine from the 1980's? At this point their differences threaten to force Mulan and Shang apart, because the day after learning about yin and yang, they forgot all about the meaning of that lesson. If either one could retain learned information for more than a day, then they wouldn't have a problem at all. What a shame.
NITPICK POINT: Mulan, thinking that Shang is dead, offers to marry one of the princes in place of the princesses, who have fallen for the Gang of Three. But of course when Shang turns up again, the happy union is back on. But exactly how does this unite the two kingdoms? Simple answer: it doesn't. So, the mission failed? I'm not seeing how it could possibly be called a success.
Also starring the voices of Ming-Na Wen (last heard in "Mulan"), Harvey Fierstein (ditto), Jerry Tondo (ditto), Soon-Tek Oh (ditto), Lea Salonga (ditto), BD Wong (last seen in "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"), Lucy Liu (last heard in "Kung Fu Panda 3"), Mark Moseley, Gedde Watanabe (last seen in "Alfie"), Lauren Tom (last seen in "Cadillac Man"), Pat Morita (last seen in "Midway"), George Takei (last seen in "For the Love of Spock"), June Foray (last heard in "Thumbelina"), Freda Foh Shen (last seen in "The Lone Ranger"), Frank Welker (last heard in "Pocahontas 2"), April Winchell (ditto), Judy Kuhn (ditto), Jillian Henry, Beth Blankenship, Mandy Gonzalez, Keone Young, Michelle Kwan
RATING: 4 out of 10 chopsticks up the nose
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