A review by JAMES SOUTHALL

Increasingly in recent years, Disney have been creating direct-to-video sequels to their more high-profile animations.  The Lion King and Aladdin have (so far) spawned two sequels each, and there are plenty of others too.  It's not just recent movies either, with sequels to Peter Pan and The Jungle Book (amongst others) having appeared too.  The latest is Mulan II, a slightly odd choice (since I didn't think the original was all that popular), but a welcome one since Mulan was actually one of their best features in years, at least since the Alan Menken golden days of the early 1990s.

I hardly need say to film music fans that the music for Mulan was written by the late Jerry Goldsmith, who delivered perhaps his strongest score of the 1990s for the picture, and one of the all time great scores for an animation (but a score that, sadly, can only really be appreciated if you are lucky enough to have found a copy of the rare Oscar promo pressed by Disney); so it was a hard act to follow for the composer of the sequel, Joel McNeely (who has scored a few of the other direct to video movies, though only one - the lovely Return to Neverland - has been released on CD).

Fortunately, McNeely has crafted a superb score, with the occasional nod to Goldsmith's style of the first movie, but thankfully crafted entirely in McNeely's own style.  Before we get to that, though, there are also some new songs included on the album, written by a variety of people.  The Menken-like "Lesson Number One" (actually composed by Jeanine Tesori, with lyrics by Alexa Junge) opens the album, and it's a nice song performed well by Lea Salonga, but it never quite reaches Menken's standards.  There's one other song by Tesori and Junge, "Like Other Girls", which is a lovely comedic piece for three female singers.  Performed as heard in the film by Beth Blankenship, Mandy Gonzalez and Judy Kuhn it's quite delightful, but sadly there's also a pop arrangement performed by Atomic Kitten.  Usually with these pop groups, the members' inability to sing is masked somewhat by them singing all together at the same time and with numerous session singers dubbed rather louder than they are, but even that can't save Atomic Kitten.  There's a brief reprise of "A Girl Worth Fighting For" from the first movie and then an original song by McNeely, the beautiful "Here Beside Me" sung by Hayley Westenra, which really is a treat.

As for McNeely's score, there are occasional quotes from the song (particularly "Lesson Number One" which forms the basis for the orchestral main title) and a lovely orchestral arrangement of the composer's own song "Here Beside Me"; but by and large it consists of particularly strong original material.  There's one big action setpiece, "The Attack", which is dynamite stuff,  great orchestral action/adventure music; the rousing "Shang Lives!"; and most of the rest is evocative, beautiful music, none moreso than "The Journey Begins", the opening score track, a complete delight.  Indeed, the only complaint I can have is that there is so little score on the album - barely twenty minutes.  It's very rare I find myself saying this, but this is one album which really does need more score on it (I've no idea how much extra McNeely actually wrote for the movie) because it ends long before you want it to.  Still, apart from that, you can't really go wrong here if you're a fan of good, old-fashioned orchestral film music, and because the album is so short, it's even been released at a real knock-down price.

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Tracks

1. Lesson Number One Lea Salonga (2:27)
2. Main Title (1:10)
3. Like Other Girls Beth Blankenship, Mandy Gonzalez, Judy Kuhn (2:26)
4. A Girl Worth Fighting For Harvey Fierstein, Jerry Tondo, Gedde Watanabe, Randy Crenshaw (1:32)
5. Here Beside Me Hayley Westenra (2:35)
6. Like Other Girls Atomic Kitten (2:50)
7. The Journey Begins (2:59)
8. In Love and In Trouble (4:38)
9. The Attack (4:06)
10. Shang Lives! (4:28)
11. Here Beside Me (2:35)