"Mulan" and "The One and Only Ivan"

So, I'm already paying for a Disney+ subscription, and since it's been added to the back catalogue, I don't have to feel too guilty about watching the new live-action "Mulan" that has generated so much controversy.  But really, there's not much to say about it as a film.

Like all the other recent Disney remakes of their animated films, the new "Mulan" is pretty lackluster.  In a bid to appeal more to Chinese audiences, they removed most of the humor, the character of Mushu, and the songs.  They also swapped out the villain to a more historically accurate one, and rejiggered the big conflict to be more about Mulan (Liu Yifei) honoring her family and country instead of learning to be true to herself.  Vast sums of money were spent to ape Zhang Yimou visuals, and create some epic battle sequences, which all look great, but the story is pretty blah.  Writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver should get some points for trying to stick closer to the original source material, and director Niki Caro does her best to make the film feel more authentically Chinese, but the efforts to avoid offense just end up making the film feel more generic.

I was never much of a fan of the 1998 "Mulan" to begin with, but its strengths were mostly in its sense of humor and its characters, not its pageantry.  While I'm glad that this isn't a slavish copy of the animated film the way that "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King" were, the new "Mulan" doesn't come up with much original material to distinguish itself the way that "Aladdin" did.  Liu Yifei has some screen presence, but the film maintains a certain distance, and Mulan never really gets much interiority.  There's also the constant distraction of the stunt casting.  While it's nice to see familiar character actors like Rosalind Chao, Tzi Ma, and Jason Scott Lee getting more of the spotlight as Mulan's parents and the villain, you've also got new characters like Donnie Yen's Commander Tung, and Gong Li's evil sorceress Xianniang, who seem to have been created solely as a way to get Donnie Yen and Gong Li into the movie.  Oh, and Jet Li plays the emperor, because why not?

I also took the opportunity to watch "The One and Only Ivan," based on the children's book by K.A. Applegate.  It's a sweet, unassuming little family film that reminds me a lot of the animal pictures Disney used to churn out regularly in the 90s, like the "Homeward Bound" and "101 Dalmatians" reboots.  The difference this time around is that all the animals are CGI.  The star of the picture is a gorilla named Ivan (Sam Rockwell), the central attraction of a tiny circus based out of a suburban shopping center, called the Big Top Mall.  HIs friends include elephants, a seal, dogs, birds, and a rabbit, all of them created in a computer, and all of them voiced by an array of celebrity talent.  Their human co-stars include Bryan Cranston as the circus ringmaster and owner Mack, and Ramon Rodriguez as a friendly janitor.

The film uses all the technology advancements from films like "The Jungle Book" and "The Lion King" to very good effect.  There were many shots where I couldn't tell that the CGI animals weren't the real thing.  It also allows for the adaptation of a story that couldn't be done in live action otherwise - at least, without resorting to the exploitation of endangered animals - an issue the film takes a firm stance against.  I should caution that the film is aimed directly at the sensibilities of younger children, and will probably be too twee for all but the most indulgent grown-ups.  It runs barely ninety minutes, and often feels like an extended test run for some of the featured effects technology.  However, "Ivan" is exactly the kind of middle-budget, middle tier kids' film that they're really not making enough of these days, and I'm not going to look a gift gorilla in the mouth.

And I'd really rather Disney be using their CGI magic to make films like this instead of "The Lion King II" or whatever else they've got percolating from the reboot machine.

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