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"Creativity"

Mulan II Review

Director: Darrell Rooney

Starring: Ming-Na, B.D. Wong, Eddie Murphy

Year: 2005

I wrote this review, and then realized I actually went into a lot of spoilers in the review. So this will be a special full movie with spoilers review, so if you haven’t seen Mulan 2 yet, maybe try and watch it before reading the review. (It’s not a big deal)

Welcome to the first Disney sequel review! Yes, with every popular Disney classic comes a somewhat milking to that movie. These include short television shows on the Disney channel, tons of marketing and toys, and of course direct to DVD sequels. And these movies are generally not the classics the others are known for. They’re usually looked at as bad. And I don’t think they’re bad, I liked the Lion King II and Return to Jafar in the past, so I went into this open-minded. And I was happy with what I came out with. This so far is my favorite Disney sequel, and seemed to have the most care put in so far. The animation wasn’t significantly worse like the other Disney sequels, they songs weren’t there to be there, and I felt everything went like a normal Disney movie. That being said, I’ll get everything wrong out of the way first. A, the plot has shrunken from a character driven story of a woman saving China to get the princesses to their arranged marriage. The plot’s story has shrunk, and there isn’t even a villain to this one. But this didn’t seem to be as bad as you’d think. The plot actually had little to do with everything, and all the conflict happened between the characters, but we’ll get to that. B, Mushu. Mushu in the last movie didn’t really learn much. He was just there for comedic relief, and his character development wasn’t there, but I didn’t mind him. He was funny, and did what he needed to. But by now I was downright sick of him. He’s getting his whole shtick redone. He needs to become good with Mulan’s ancestors (they’re all pretty uninteresting again) and that’s it. And he does this by basically becoming the antagonist of the whole movie, wrecking Mulan’s marriage, but it all comes back in the end and he admits his wrong. But he doesn’t learn anything, and he gets what he wants anyway. His character is in the same place as the beginning of movie 1, except he’s not the underdog, so when he gets what he wants, it’s not rewarding. If anything it leaves a bad note at the end of the movie. And that gets me to C, the end and beginning of the movie. I remember when Mulan started, it got me into the movie, and the introductory to the characters and everything was great. And the end was a sweet ending wrapping it all up. Nope, the sequel says fuck all. It begins in an ordinary scene. We see all are old characters, and they’re not introduced well, they’re just there. We even see Mulan’s family, but they get one good scene whole movie! They’re pointless! They like others are there for the sake of being there! And that was everything that got under my skin. That being said, there was a lot to enjoy from this. I thought since you couldn’t repeat Mulan’s journey again, moving it to a yin-yang story shown through her and the other guy’s (Sorry, I didn’t remember his name) relationship was a good central idea. And the yin-yang had a lot of good ideas, like near the beginning of the movie in that song. But I am a little tired of every couple in a sequel needs to argue, especially in a story where they conquer very little in the plot. I just read a book where the two main characters were in a relationship, and through the giant plot, it really showed how much they loved each other. But Mulan and the other guy can’t get through Mushu fucking their day up, which is sad. And back to the end, it was bad. And it followed a really good scene. Mulan’s boyfriend died for about a minute, then it showed he was alive (I don’t know how he survived) But Mulan had a really dramatic and bad ass scene. There was tears, dramatic music, and she was like, "I’m finishing this mission.” And yeah she did, but the movie was dumb after that. Mushu saved the day by trolling the stupid king, how funny. But whatever, it was still a good movie. The yin-yang thing I liked, I always love those kind of stories. And the soldiers got a big push, one that made their characters. They basically fell in love with the three new princess characters (they were good, no complaints) and it really wrapped up nice. They had their own theme with the story, and they had good dialogue. And speaking of good dialogue, I really liked it in this movie, despite Mushu’s. The writing was solid, and there was a moment or two where it felt more realistic than a lot of Disney movies. I also thought the voice acting was very solid. I remember just one of the princesses giggling and I was like, "That’s a damn good giggle, good job!” But basically it didn’t stop the story and annoyances from stopping. It’s basically a bad movie, but with so much good thrown in it’s actually pretty damn good. I was actually really debating between a three and a four out of five, but with what it had, I had to fall back on a three. It really felt just lazy at parts, which was odd since other scenes and story arcs seemed to pour all charisma and energy it had. Definitely a good follow up, especially for some the characters getting better conclusions. It’s worth seeing if you enjoyed Mulan, or just a Disney fan in general.