The legend of a Chinese Joan-of-Arc who conceals her sex in order to take her father's place in the Imperial army permits the Disney animation team to pick up their ridicule of masculine roughness-and-toughness right where they left it in Hercules, and to press onward with it. This of course could be a perfectly legitimate angle of attack if the filmmakers did not attempt to have it both ways. It is not enough for them to chip away at the traditional John Ford-ian, Howard Hawks-ian ideal of men among men; they have to insist at the same time, or a slightly later time, that a woman can do anything a man can do, with the possible exception of spitting, just because it would be so much more fair and egalitarian and utopian that way. (Maybe they have picked up a little past Hercules, just after the same studio's live-action G.I. Jane.) When push eventually comes to shove, the heroine manages to wipe out the yellow-eyed, gray-skinned Huns single-handedly ("You the man! Well, sorta"), and her male comrades-in-arms come in handy only for the mop-up operation when, under the command of the ball-breaking heroine, they are obliged to cross-dress as concubines. A general camp sensibility again prevails: a brawling ruffian is voiced by Harvey Fierstein (tee-hee), and the obligatory comical animal sidekick -- a miniature dragon with a can-do spirit -- talks in an anachronistic homeboy patois courtesy of Eddie Murphy: "Jump back! I'm pretty hot, huh?" and "Let's go kick some Hunny buns!" With the voices of Ming-Na Wen and Miquel Ferrer; directed by Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft. (1998) — Duncan Shepherd
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