Mediocre effort at telling Chinese folk tale

Rating: 4/10 (29 April 2012)

Not really poor, by anybody's standards except Disney's, that is. This movie shot for yet another in a long line of breath taking animation extravaganzas for the famed studio. It fell a bit short.
The movie has many scenes of wide shots, enormous structures, army multitudes, and feeds its dialog with plenty of ancient Chinese wisdom. But there is little involvement for the audience where the central characters, especially Mulan herself, are concerned. In a movie about a woman who impersonate a man in order to become a soldier, that is integral to invoke interest. But the story never pulls it off; at best, Mulan comes off as a spoiled rich daughter who whines to herself, and sneaks around regardless of the consequences. It's difficult to accept her as a heroine of ethnic diversity (as was intended, it seems) when the character sounds more like a modern western middle-school girl talking on her like cell phone. The Chinese folk tale character was lost in translation somewhere.
By the time she does her super hero routine in the battle scenes, it only evokes a ho-hum response: did we (yawn) beat the bad guys, yet? Most scenes from the film are too over the top to be taken seriously. Others are forgotten soon after seeing the film.
The film has its moments, but it's among the weaker movies by Disney.