Review: A new (ish) animated take on Mulan isn't worth fighting for

I remember when, as a kid, we would go to the video store, and I would see a bunch of animated movies on the shelf that had the same titles as recent and classic Disney movies, but were clearly not those Disney movies. They were based on the same public domain fairy tales, books, etc., and were made -- presumably cheaply and quickly -- to try to cash in on name recognition, or at least confuse some weary parents into grabbing the wrong VHS off the shelf.

When I got an email about Mulan Princess Warrior, I immediately thought of those movies. But this one wasn't that, right? I mean, the Disney version of this story came out in 1998. Even the live-action remake came out five years ago. But, weirdly, after trying to find this movie on Letterboxd, I realized that it is sort of one of those movies. On there, it's listed as Kung Fu Mulan, and it came out originally in 2020, the same year as the live-action Disney movie. But in the US, the movie is finally coming out on VOD next month -- May 13, to be exact -- so here we are.

I think it's worth saying right off the bat that this is not a good-looking movie. Sometimes these low-budgeted international productions just look janky and bad, and that's going to be a massive barrier of entry for a lot of people, which I get. In the US, we're really spoiled by how good all of our animated movies look. Even the worst-looking ones still have a level of polish that you aren't always going to find when you start digging into the international scene (obviously, plenty of international animated movies also look amazing). From the moment Mulan Princess Warrior started, I was like, okay, this is one of those.

And that's fine. When a movie doesn't look great, it's just a matter of getting used to the look, which honestly doesn't take long. After a few minutes, you're in it, and you can go along for, and hopefully enjoy, the ride.

In this case, I didn't particularly enjoy the ride. I appreciate that this is not at all just retracing the steps laid out in Disney's much-beloved version of the story. It doesn't feel redundant to watch, not a pale echo or imitation. But it is narratively quite limp, lacking an engine. Here, we meet Mulan as she infiltrates an enemy camp on a mission to execute a prince. When she finds the prince, however, he's a little kid, so she can't bring herself to do it. She leaves, pursued by the other prince (and, unbeknownst to her, her actual target), whom she believes to be a mere stable boy.

It's a solid set-up that leads to a sort of odd couple buddy adventure road movie type deal. But soon enough, the two characters go their separate ways, and by that point, I found myself wondering what the point of this movie was. It ends up feeling episodic. First you get the buddy movie. Then it reshapes itself into a forbidden romance. Finally, it ends up being more of a political thriller/action thing. The pieces feel disconnected. Rather than spinning all of these plates concurrently, keeping all of these different narrative threads alive throughout, the movie ends up focusing on one at a time, which makes the story feel just as janky as the animation.

It's a thoroughly frustrating affair, because it's not all bad. The characters are well-conceived, and some of them have cool designs. Mulan is pretty badass, maybe a little generic-looking, but like...if she were a character in a fighting game, I would absolutely pick her. In fact, this movie is the latest addition to a very specific Letterboxd list I'm been keeping the past few years:

I also liked some of the humor here. There are a few one-liners that made me laugh, and the characters have more personality than the visuals, which are largely just concerned with trying to look realistic, leading to a lot of bland settings and lackluster action scenes that mostly cut away from the cool stuff.

Also, I was pretty gagged by the surprise twist villain! I won't spoil it here, but it helped me look at the preceding movie with slightly kinder eyes, even as it segued us into a drawn-out action finale that wasn't very satisfying.

There's not really much reason to watch this movie, sadly. If you want to watch an animated version of Mulan, there's already a classic one to check out. If you want an action-y movie in this vein, you could watch White Snake or Ne Zha or a bunch of other options. Unfortunately, this one is a dud.