Would have been better without Mushu's character

Rating: 7/10 (9 January 2001)

I love cartoons.
I think ever since the first full-length cartoon movies have been made, there was the "funny" support character which was responsible for the laughs.
In later times this character was in general the hero's aide: the Genie in Alladin, Philoctetes in Hercules and so on.
The problem is that the funny character tends to get more and more exaggerated every time, borrowing standard and oh-so-predictable lines from poor comedies, spoiling everything. Don't get me wrong: The Genie and Philoctetes were perfect, because they didn't overdo it, but Mushu certainly overdoes it.
What need do we have for this kind of silly humor in a children movie? All the lines were heard and reheard, stupid and boring... and not funny at all. A movie CAN be nice without somebody telling the same old jokes over and over again, jokes which sound the same whether they are told in I-don't-know-which-century China (like in Mulan) or in the next century (like in the last semi-science-fiction movie I have seen, The Sixth Day).

A cartoon movie is dedicated first of all to children, and I think that at least for them we should keep the movies nice, like the stories were when I was a kid. Why do kids these days watch mostly cartoons about bigger and bigger robots fighting each other and not Tom and Jerry anymore? We should try to change this mentality...

Other than that the movie was very nice, the musical score was great and did a great job in sustaining the action.