Lacked consistency, but otherwise not bad.

Rating: Null/10 (24 April 1999)

I approached Mulan with some trepidation. Disney had become fairly heavy-handed with the political correctness and I feared that Mulan would take it a step further. But the PC Police kept their nightsticks tucked in their belts on this one. Although there is quite a bit of disrespect for Chinese culture (why is our preference for strong-willed women superior to the ancient Chinese preference for demure women?), it's done with remarkable restraint considering the source.
Mulan is a likable character, and Wen's voice brings tears to your eyes. She, like Belle, risks all to save her father. She isn't simply a brainless, helpless Barbie doll awaiting rescue. Mulan's svelte physique was refreshing as well, after the wasp-waisted Pocahontas and her predecessors.
My biggest complaint was the jarring lack of a coherent tone. Characters switch from highly formalized speech to modern slang from sentence to sentence. The soldiers would be warriors one moment and dunderheads the next. We are taken in a twinkling from admiring Mulan's ingenuity in aiming the rocket to cause an avalanche and bury the barbarian hoards to rolling our eyes as a horse laden with a grown woman, a burly man, and a dragon bungee-jump by virtue of a piece of rope tied to an arrow one of them is grasping.
Considering how some animated "classics" (All Dogs Go To Heaven comes to mind) are utterly stultifying, Mulan stands out as being watchable. It's no match for Beauty and the Beast, but you don't need to cringe when your kid pops it in the VCR.