When going into the new “Mulan” I wasn’t very excited. I really liked the old animated version and wasn’t interested in all the changes that were going to be made that would differentiate it from the original. However, I was pleasantly surprised to discover a wonderful adaptation from animation to live action.

The tale told was much more like the legends that you hear of the actual stories about the events that the story was based on. It still had a heartwarming feeling with nods to the movie we had all grown so fond of through our childhoods. The story did have differences for sure from the original, but I liked the artistic liberties they took because it made the live action of it flow much smoother and didn’t feel like they were just trying to copy the original word for word. When movies are just remade and copied completely they can get dry and wooden and the jokes fall through the cracks. It’s not enjoyable because you aren’t looking out for anything new and exciting.

As far as the acting, I felt that the actors did a good job showing the characters as real people and not just as if they were plain fictional characters. It felt believable that they were who they said they were. There weren’t any characters that were strictly funny, but there were still jokes in it. In a way, not having a slapstick character helped make the story line more believable because those types of characters can make story lines fall flat. With the overly-dramatic humorous characters interacting with the main characters that are maybe more serious, the serious actors cannot laugh. The actors may also hear the line a thousand times in a humorous scene and quickly get bored with the script.

The CGI and other effects were pretty good. There were some scenes where someone would do a kick or something computer-generated, and the action would move just a little too fast to look accurate– almost like a fast-forward button on a tape. So viewers could tell in those spots that they used CG, but it was not noticeable in those same scenes in the actual image quality.

The different liberties they did take I felt were well-considered. There were only a few things that I wish would have been just a little different. They weren’t bad at all, and I don’t know what my suggestion would be without thinking on it more, but I really did like what they did with the story.

I would give the new “Mulan” a 4.5/5 rating and suggest it to anyone looking for a fun, light action movie.