It's Disney cheese with an extra pound of stink sprinkled on top. Here's the low-down:
1. Donnie Yen was great as always. He's clearly THE martial artist and his acting was good too. Side by side, no one matches with him. His martial arts should not have been that stellar, when the heroine was supposed to be Mulan. 2. Mulan apparently was gifted with extraordinary fighting prowess without being taught anything as a child. A cliche that would have worked is if she was actually taught how to fight...by Donnie Yen maybe? Shoulder shrug to this blunder. 3. Was Jet Li in this movie? Great makeup work. 4. Mulan's village was a bad rip off from Kung Fu Hustle. Disney cheese was added to make the village clean and spotless. In fact, it was clean and spotless in every location of the movie, even extending to the wardrobe and objects. The dad's sword, which was used in prior battle, was spotless and unblemished. 5. Mulan's character could have been so much better developed. With good directing, she would have been much more endearing and charismatic. You don't randomly make her hair curled when she is fighting baddies. The actress did a good job for what it's worth - it's the directing that made her character plain silly and unbelievable. 6. I get it - Mulan is a woman in a male-dominated society. At the end, all the males bow down to her and all of Chinese civilization owes their gratitude. What I don't get is why this has to be in-your-face so obvious? 7. The CGI characters and fighting scenes stunk up the movie. It was also very stylized a la Hero, but the latter actually had stellar fighting choreography (Jet and Donnie obviously) and a coherent story line that was enriched by actual Chinese language, not English.
If you want to waste $30 for streaming, have right at it and entertain the little kids. Otherwise, fire up Hero or Crouching, Tiger Hidden Dragon to see what real female empowerment (Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi) can accomplish in good movie productions.
1. Donnie Yen was great as always. He's clearly THE martial artist and his acting was good too. Side by side, no one matches with him. His martial arts should not have been that stellar, when the heroine was supposed to be Mulan. 2. Mulan apparently was gifted with extraordinary fighting prowess without being taught anything as a child. A cliche that would have worked is if she was actually taught how to fight...by Donnie Yen maybe? Shoulder shrug to this blunder. 3. Was Jet Li in this movie? Great makeup work. 4. Mulan's village was a bad rip off from Kung Fu Hustle. Disney cheese was added to make the village clean and spotless. In fact, it was clean and spotless in every location of the movie, even extending to the wardrobe and objects. The dad's sword, which was used in prior battle, was spotless and unblemished. 5. Mulan's character could have been so much better developed. With good directing, she would have been much more endearing and charismatic. You don't randomly make her hair curled when she is fighting baddies. The actress did a good job for what it's worth - it's the directing that made her character plain silly and unbelievable. 6. I get it - Mulan is a woman in a male-dominated society. At the end, all the males bow down to her and all of Chinese civilization owes their gratitude. What I don't get is why this has to be in-your-face so obvious? 7. The CGI characters and fighting scenes stunk up the movie. It was also very stylized a la Hero, but the latter actually had stellar fighting choreography (Jet and Donnie obviously) and a coherent story line that was enriched by actual Chinese language, not English.
If you want to waste $30 for streaming, have right at it and entertain the little kids. Otherwise, fire up Hero or Crouching, Tiger Hidden Dragon to see what real female empowerment (Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi) can accomplish in good movie productions.