MULAN II

JOEL McNEELY

Rating:

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton: In recent years, the mammoth Disney corporation have been flooding the home video market with comparatively cheap ‘sequels’ to some of their high-profile theatrical animated features. In the last couple of years alone we have seen Return to Neverland (a sequel to Peter Pan), Lion King 3, Atlantis: Milo’s Return, Stitch! The Movie, and several others – and now Mulan II. However, unlike many of the other Disney DVD spin-offs, Mulan II has actually been the recipient of a great deal of praise, mainly for its intelligent storyline, uncompromising animation, and worthy score by current Disney golden boy Joel McNeely.

The original Mulan had an exquisite, exciting score by the late great Jerry Goldsmith, many elements of which are rightly emulated by McNeely here. With a delicious combination of exotic eastern instrumental performances and the sweep of a classic western orchestra, the score for Mulan II is a sheer delight from start to finish. The “Main Title” begins with an absolutely heart-melting erhu performance of the main theme, accompanied by the orchestra and an ‘aaahing’ choir, and “The Journey Begins” picks up where it left off before engaging in some delightful comedy mickey-mouse travelling music that is, somewhat oddly, reminiscent of some of the classic Western music of Tiomkin and Moross.

Surprisingly, Mulan II also contains some quite exciting and tumultuous action music – “In Love and Trouble” features a middle section made up of tense, dramatic music with a heavy drumbeat and piano chords under a sombre orchestral theme, before exploding into “The Attack”, a variant on Goldsmith’s Hun music from the original Mulan, replete with stirring a percussion undercurrent, racing strings, melodramatic crescendos, and powerful brass fanfares which seem to spell out ‘You’ll Bring Honour To “s All’. The finale, “Shang Lives!”, is triumphant and emotional, and contains upbeat and stirring recapitulations of the main song-themes.

The songs, written by composer/orchestrator Jeanine Tesori and lyricists Alexa Junge and Kate Light are, on the whole, of high quality, alluding to the familiar Disney epithets of self-improvement, individuality, non-conformity and ‘being true to yourself’. “Lesson Number One” contains thematic material from McNeely’s main title, adapted by Tesori, and performed by gusto by Lea Salonga and a girl’s chorus. The rousing “Like Other Girls” is a knockabout girl-power tune, and features a great comedy performance by Judy ‘Pocahontas’ Kuhn, one of my favourite Disney vocalists. The less said about Atomic Kitten’s pop version of the song the better; similarly the redux of “A Girl Worth Fighting For”, which revisits the song from Mulan, but sadly fails to take the advice I gave in my 1999 review and allows Harvey Fierstein to sing once more.

The performance highlight, however, is the sublime “Here Beside Me”, which features the talents of the 17-year old New Zealand-born classical superstar Hayley Westenra. The combination McNeely’s delicate melody and Westenra’s crystalline voice is quite beautiful, and the superb instrumental recapitulation which concludes the album further highlights just how much talent Joel McNeely has, and how under-valued he is by Hollywood in general (not including, of course, the people at Disney Animation, who seem to be the only studio to have realised this).

By now, readers of Movie Music UK should know that the vast majority of Chinese/Western combo scores send me into raptures of delight, and this score is no different. If, like me, you enjoyed Conrad Pope’s Pavilion of Women, Rachel Portman’s The Joy Luck Club, or any works by Kitaro, Tan Dun or Shigeru Umebayashi, you will undoubtedly find much to enjoy here.

The only drawback with this album as a whole is its brevity: just 31 minutes in total, with 19 of that as score. However, the one positive aspect of the album’s shortness is its price – it is being marketed as a “special purchase” with a lower price-tag than one would normally expect to find on a soundtrack CD. I strongly urge you all to take advantage of Disney’s generosity and pick up a copy if you can. I wholeheartedly recommend it to all.

Track Listing: Running Time: 31 minutes 50 seconds

Walt Disney 5050467-2917-2-0 (2005)

Music composed and conducted by Joel McNeely. Orchestrations by David Slonaker, Nan Schwartz Mishkin, Jeanine Tesori, Scott Erickson and Doug Besterman. Recorded and mixed by Jonathan Allen, Frank Wolf, Jonathan Duckett and Graham Stack. Edited by Craig Pettigrew. Album produced by Joel McNeely and Matt Walker.

Cinemusic Online: Review by Ryan Keaveney (***½)
Filmtracks: Review by Christian Clemmensen (****)
Movie Wave: Review by James Southall (***½)
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