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It is just my luck that for two weeks in a row, I am watching a movie with an emo lead female character. After New Moon, I thought Mulan would be a better choice but oh, how massively wrong I was. Just like New Moon, there was a good period of time where it was all emo. Brooding, crying, with the same exact expression, frame after frame. I have no idea why directors think these prolonged moments are beneficial to any movie.

Hua Mulan may be real or fictional, no one knows for sure, but either way, this movie by Jingle Ma seems like a more accurate representation compared to the Disney version. Instead of the happy-feel-movie that we see in Disney’s Mulan, this one is more grim and more emotionally charged.

Unfortunately, the casting didn’t reflect the ability to showcase those emotions. Jaycee Chan may be growing as an actor and he did relatively well here against his peers but there were moments when his expression didn’t match the moment. Chen Kun was the ultimate failure with his rock-like acting and Zhao Wei just does not seem to fit the image of Mulan.

The movie also had horrible pacing, bringing the tempo up before abruptly killing it off with some of the most boring moments featuring Chen Kun and Zhao Wei. One would have thought that this movie was tailor-made to be made into a Chinese epic, but it failed badly here.

Hopefully someone can make a better version soon.

After Mulan, I decided to watch something a bit more casual, and more for the laughs. Planet 51 looked promising and it did delivered. While not in the same calibre as the Disney-Pixar animated films that I have grown accustomed to, Planet 51 can hold its own providing some funny moments and good animation.

If you are a fan of space/ alien movies, then you will recognise the good dose of references made in this animation film. The alien-dog, the typical man landing on moon walk, and many others will have you chuckle to yourself. It is not a laugh-out-loud movie but it is funny enough.

But the movie suffers from pacing and after a while, you get kinda restless as you know where the story is heading already. But some scenes were dragged out a bit too much for me and it got kinda boring. Even the kids in the cinema agreed as they started running about.

Overall, it was a movie weekend but it wasn’t filled with the greatest of movies. At least I ended it with the slightly better Planet 51.

Note: If you are a parent reading this and you bring your kids to the cinema, please make sure you can control your kids, else don’t bring them at all. Towards the end of Planet 51, there were annoying kids running about in the cinema and making a ruckus. I blame the parents for failing to control them. If they can’t sit still, then parents should just bring them out of the cinema.