Martin Papp

Enjoyable if it's your first time following the story of Mulan, but if you watched the original animated version there won't be much suspense since you know every step of the plot. While the theme of being true to yourself and female power is overdone the last few years, it's saved by blending it with more unique and less explored East Asian values of family honor and devotion to family. This is probably the film's strongest point. I expected a lot more spectacle from the action sequences. This film had the potential and the resources to make an epic action movie with incredible martial arts actors like Jet Li and Donny Yen but they completely wasted it. The action sequences were choppy and lacking in creativity. Any standard kong fu martial arts flick will have more entertaining fight scenes. The fight scenes can't even hold up a candle to films like Matrix Reloaded or say any Jackie Chan film. I also felt the editing was terrible, probably a result of mistakes when shooting. There were huge visual gaps in the action sequences. It happened quite a lot but one of the more egregious examples is when she hops on her horse on one side of the enemy lines, and then next cut someone magically is behind enemy lines crouching behind a boulder. It just felt really disorienting, weird, and left me wondering how the hell do they not show even a glimpse of the process. I'm all for having female directors, but I think Disney made a mistake not hiring someone with a martial arts directing background. Would like to have seen this movie made be Ang Lee or someone like that. I think it could have been 10 times more epic. Overall, I think it's a mediocre film at best. Could be a fun movie to watch if you have kids, but really could and should have been better.