Delayed time & again for production or scheduling issues before becoming an early Covid casualty (‘mixed’ release with theatrical & ‘Pay Wall’ streaming), then a rushed home video rollout, its commercial buzz long dissipated. Seen now plain after all the hand-ringing by company bean-counters, it proves a dutiful, but sadly uninspired Live-Action remake of the superior 1998 cartoon version. (One of Disney’s last hand-drawn animated features.) Director Niki Caro and the writing team don’t do a slavish copy, no need on such an oft-told tale, but can’t find (or hold) a proper tone that works for family comedy tropes and military action as Mulan, a country family’s eldest daughter disguised as a young man, spirits away to join the Emperor’s Army in place of her aged father. (Actress Liu Yifei such a bland presence, you hardly note the gender identity flips.) And no one seems to have figured out how to get in and out of the CGI ‘sweetened’ action moves, giving the film a stop/start quality at all the wrong times. (They might be practicing fancy moves for the NBA All-Star slam-dunk competition.) Some grand vistas and mass movements are handsomely brought off, downright frame-worthy as compositions, but the storyline feels emotionally impervious behind all the pageantry. Right at the end, when Mulan comes home, things loosen up a bit, but all too late. Same-O on the film’s botched release, all too late.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: If you’re looking for a Disney version of the story, stick with animated MULAN. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/09/mulan-1998.html
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The final fight as Mulan fights off attack on shifting scaffolding might be out of a Harold Lloyd silent comedy ‘thrill’ sequence.
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