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Mulan II Movie Review

Mulan II is a 2004 direct-to-video animated musical drama film from Disneytoon Studios. It’s a passable sequel that isn’t as bad as most have said.

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“No one should marry a person they don’t love“

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Mulan and Shang are sent on a special mission – to escort the Emperor’s three daughters across the country to meet their soon-to-be fiancés. So yes, this movie has nothing to do with Chinese history or any war whatsoever. Thus, it only has very little of the action sequences, which of course felt odd and inappropriate for a Mulan vehicle.

What it does have in its place is your standard romantic drama coming from these Disney sequels. While you would think judging by the premise that the film is quite a rich, sophisticated tale of arranged marriage versus free choice, you would be sorely mistaken. Yes, it does explore that, but with kid gloves and in such a simple manner that it really did not make much of an impact unfortunately.

The new characters are also not that great. The three princesses have some fun dynamics between each other and the men that they are into, but overall they were poorly developed and some of their scenes were too silly and childish. I did like the happy endings for Ling, Yao and Chien-Po, but still it felt forced and unrealistic to pair them all off with girls so successfully and so easily.

As for the main characters, Mulan is far less interesting this time around and Shang is actually quite annoying. Their fabricated conflict was horrendous, though it did provide a good story of regret and redemption for Mushu. He himself is excellent here, very funny and by far the best character this time around. I also liked the cute cricket once again.

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The soundtrack in Mulan II is so bad. It was nice hearing A Girl Worth Fighting For once again, though. The new songs are all mediocre with (I Wanna Be) Like Other Girls clearly being the best one, though even that one is too annoying for its own sake. The movie’s animation is fine, but nothing remarkable. The movie simply lacks the majesty and ambition of the original, but personally the humor is present and so is the charm, so I did not find it terrible myself.