Mulan (1998)

Mulan (1998)

Disney

June 19, 1998

Historical Drama, Historical Comedy, War Drama, War Comedy, Musical*

DVD
B-

A G-rated Disney movie about cross-dressing, implied nudity, concubines, and of course war?  It was The Nineties.  Anyway, while not a typical princess movie, I like it better than most, if not as much as I did when I saw it for the first time about fifteen years ago.  The voice acting is fun, if not always culturally appropriate.  (Not that I will ever knock June Foray of course.  The woman was a long-lived legend.)

Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook co-directed.

*I'm skipping the "romance" tag because it's such a minor part of the story.

Mrs. Doubtfire

Mrs. Doubtfire

20th Century Fox

November 24, 1993

Comedy
DVD
C

I'd avoided this movie since the time, since the clips and quotes I saw and heard just never struck me as funny.  I made it to the halfway point, since I actually liked the very beginning, with Robin's character playing a temperamental actor, even if that was a little too close to Tootsie all things considered.  The acting was better than I expected, including poor miscast Sally Field as the Yuppie wife-mother.  But the random racism, sexism, and, yes, transphobia (including a throwaway joke about one of Robin's phone personalities), as well as the EXTREME, even for this sitcomic setup, implausibility (an acquaintance notices that two characters have the same eyes but the wife and children don't?), finally got to be too much.  Still, I've certainly seen worse, including from Williams.

This movie is based on Anne Fine's novel Alias Madame Doubtfire, which I think I did attempt reading in the last twenty years, but I wouldn't swear to it.  Chris Columbus directed, three years after Home Alone.