First off, "Mulan" has some of the best animation I've ever seen. They add some computer animation to the traditional cell animation (something that Disney does very well), and it's never been this seamless. It looked beautiful. The visuals are simply amazing. Yeah, I gotta say the typical movie critic thing, it's "visually stunning." There. I said it.
It's not just the visuals that kick ass, though. The story is great, keeping you interested from beginning to end. As usual with a Disney animated film, there were about 32,564,345 writers, but that's okay. If it works, stick with it. And it worked here.
The voices were very well-selected, except for one, which I'll get to in a moment. Harvey Fierstein, a well-known gay actor, was the big, tough brute of a soldier. The humor in the irony was brief though, because he really WAS effective. The villain was voiced by Miguel Ferrer, and DAMN was he great! He had the perfect voice for the role. Finally, the voice I had a problem with was Eddie Murphy's. Don't get me wrong, he was hilarious. Everything he said was funny, and the character was cool. The problem is that I don't know if it was right for the movie. It changed the tone TOO much. In just about any other Disney film, it woulda been fine. Just not in this one.
There's been
some mentioning here and there about how this was the first animated film
for the animation department at Disney/MGM in Orlando, Florida. They're
off to a great start. Keep it up, guys.