‘Mulan’ Shines Even With Disney Constraints (FILM REVIEW)

Rating: B+

From its opening shots, it’s clear the Mulan, the latest live action remake from Disney, aspires to the epic.

That’s more than a worthy goal from director Niki Caro, who is placed in the unenviable position of balancing the needs of Disney with the needs of respecting the Chinese legend. As is quickly apparent, the director is more than up to the challenge. Her efforts here are rewarded by the production of a very good movie.

Good, but not great. No, there is one thing and one thing only that keeps Mulan from achieving the heights of its ambition. At just under two hours long, the film is, ultimately, too constrained by the needs of Disney to reach its true pinnacle. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; this is, at the end of the day, a Disney movie, one intended to be watched with one’s family. Family movies, by necessity, aren’t intended to be three hour long epics. Viewed through that lens, Mulan is perfect.

And yet it’s difficult not to wonder at what might have been. Caro certainly does all she can to imbue her film with the epic scope this movie deserves. Stunning wide angles leap off the screen to create absolutely breathtaking portraits. Battle scenes come to vivid life and thrust you directly into the midst of wuxia combat so rarely seen in American productions. All of the pieces work in perfect tandem to create the best experience this movie can offer.

And yet, the limitations of Disney prevent adequate exploration of its characters. Outside Mulan herself (Yifei Liu), too many of the characters are too flat to match the scope of Caro’s vision. Most disappointing is Bori Khan (Jason Scott Lee) who, despite Lee’s performance, comes across as too shallow to become a perfect villain.

This is, of course, par for the course for family movies. Family movies need to be easily digestible and understood by the youngest members of the family watching it, and so they are inherently bound. Characters both good and bad are beholden to the expectations of young audiences; plot beats need to be obvious.

What Mulan does best, however, is balance the conflicting aspirations of what the film wants to be and what the film needs to be. The result is pure, unending spectacle that sets a new standard for Disney’s live action remakes. Caro, along with screenwriters Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Elizabeth Martin, and Lauren Hynek, have stripped Disney’s animated Mulan to its bare essentials, and rebuilt the story in a way that respects the modern cinematic ideal, the legend of Mulan, and the needs of Disney.

Even though you can (very often) feel Caro’s desire to break out of the constraints of the Disney formula, Mulan is never lacking in quality or entertainment. Its flaws—all of which are a manifestation of the single flaw mentioned at length above—never detract from the value of the film itself, which excels at being unabashedly itself and untied to the 1998 animated film.

It also works as the perfect stepping stone to experiencing the sheer depth of Chinese wuxia cinema. While Mulan isn’t, precisely, wuxia, everything about the film—its cinematography, its choreography—certainly owes a debt to classics like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, House of Flying Daggers, or The Hero. It’s quite often a pitch perfect homage that, one hopes, opens the minds of young viewers to the world of cinema that exists outside the confines of Hollywood entertainment.

Of course, we can’t talk about Mulan without now talking about the way it’s being released. Originally scheduled for release back in March, the film was pushed back owing to concerns surrounding COVID-19. After months of circling various release dates, Disney finally decided to test the waters of an unorthodox release strategy by making it available on Disney+ at the cost of about $30.

For the single, that’s surely a steep price to pay, making so that perhaps better to wait until Mulan becomes available on the platform for free (in December, according to current reports). Families, however, who are in desperate search of something to do together in the midst of ongoing quarantine efforts, would be hard pressed to find a better way to come together. Given that the $30 price tag is, in many cases, less than the cost of buying tickets for the whole family, it’s certainly a small price to pay.

But whether you wait for free streaming or pony up the cash, one thing remains the same. Mulan, forced though it is to restrain its ambitions, is still a wonderful film that’s worth the time and effort it might take to see it. Even with the one thing holding it back from achieving its potential greatness, Mulan is still a wonderful and engaging film that’s perfect for family quarantine movie night and a try sight to behold.

Mulan is now available to rent on Disney+.