Please send your thoughts on movies that kids might see. I will add them to this site so that we have an idea of what we can let our kids see without comment, what needs some interpretation, and what is definitely off the list. (Hey, my soon-to-be 8-year-old wants to see the Spice Girls movie and I haven't found a review of it on the Net that speaks to the issue of where on the Vamp scale it sits. Have you seen it?)
Review by Linda Blanchard, June 20, 1998.
Yes! No movie is perfect and I'm no harsh critic, so you may disagree with me, but I liked this movie. An adult understanding of just how devalued women have been in the Chinese culture (binding of feet, selling of baby girls, etc. etc.) lent an extra edge to my viewing of the movie. They didn't get into all that, just the issue of a woman's place: not in the army, for sure, with the penalty for being caught there being death. So I got a little furious when the reason the hero doesn't take Mulan's life is because he owes her his (she saved him, after all), and not because she's smart and persistent and heroic and saved not just him but her entire company and probably her country. It gave me an opportunity to talk to Ted and Miri about how, historically, women have been kept from contributing as much as they could to the welfare of the group (family, community, country, world) by not being treated as equals. And aside from that, the graphics were beautiful and the plot moved right along. I'd see this one again. Both Ted (5) and Miri (7) loved it.