beautiful at times, but far from a classic

Rating: Null/10 (27 November 2004)

Somewhere in 'Mulan' is a great story. In fact you can feel the potential all through the first half of the film. Lush backgrounds, wonderful character design, and a promising premise. Enter Eddie Murphy and everything falls flat. Not to say that it is his fault alone but whenever Mushu appears you can almost see the studio exec memos saying 'more comic relief' or 'more kid appeal'. Yeesh. A friend of mine suggested that the character may have been better silent or as a ghost that Mulan could only see. Something falls flat in the second half of the film that is never quite retrieved which is a real shame. The folks at Disney could use a few lessons in subtlety in storytelling from the Chinese.