An Ode to Martial Smarts

The great wall of China snakes like a stern dragon through the opening shots of Mulan, a strange and beguiling new breed of Disney animated feature. This is, in part, a war movie that understands loss, desolation, death. Power and discipline are the motifs here: bending your will and others', bending the system while working within it. The villain, a crazed, WWF-style hulkster named Shan-Yu, has no comic irony softening his brute trapezoidal lines. He's just an evil machine with vampire teeth. The Wall, the vast plains and hills, the Forbidden City itself, all cringe at his shadow.

In other words, this is strong, supple entertainment, not a girlish cartoon in the style of The Little Mermaid, in which a girl becomes a woman. Here, a girl becomes a man. Mulan is the only child of a dutiful man tied to tradition. "I know my place," he tells his rebellious tomboy of a daughter. "It is time you learned yours." Her place, it turns out, is at the head of a ragtag platoon fighting Shan-Yu's Huns. This woman warrior will prove that the art of war is the smart of war, that one wins by cunning, not strength. And unlike most Disney heroines, she achieves her goal without much mentoring. As her sidekick, a spindly dragon named Mushu, proudly says, "You da man!"

Mulan is the first feature from Disney's Florida unit--those people who try to get work done as Walt Disney World tourists gawk at them through the huge windows of the animation pavilion. It doesn't seem to have distracted them a whit, for the team, led by directors Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft and producer Pam Coats, has created the boldest, most persuasive storytelling in a while, in a ravishing pastel palette (from production designer Hans Bacher) that recalls the color experiments of Fantasia as much as the delicacy of Chinese graphic art.

Yes, yes, it's a Disney cartoon, with comic relief--a little wheezy at first, in a matchmaker scene that seems to revel in inflicting pain--and yearning romance. It has some star voices, like Eddie Murphy, very funny as the Mushu shrimp, and a fine cast of East Asian and Asian-American actors (Ming-Na Wen, B.D. Wong, Soon-Tek Oh, James Shigeta) playing the main characters. But what's terrific about Mulan is its reaching for emotions that other movies run from: family love and duty, personal honor and group commitment, obedience and ingenuity. Nice notions for kids to think about.

The four songs, by Matthew Wilder and David Zippel, propel the plot with lyric efficiency. But then, at the end, the racy Eddie Murphy spirit that has been held in check during the film explodes with a Motownish rave-up, True to Your Heart, that cascades over the closing credits. The song doesn't have much to do with the girl-power theme of this briskly enchanting film, but it's a perky parting gift from the Disney folks. The R.-and-B. group 98[degrees] and Stevie Wonder trade harmonic and harmonica riffs with some sassy horns, and euphoria saturates the multiplex. Cap your soda cup before dancing out of the theater.

--By Richard Corliss