Turning Red

Director: Domee Shi

Writer: Domee Shi, Julia Cho, Sarah Streicher

Starring: Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Ava Morse, Hyein Park, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Orion Lee, Ho-Wai Ching

Reason for watching: New Pixar release

Number of times I’ve watched it: first time

***

When is a gift not a gift? When you decide not to see it as such. Often times our own perceptions can affect the way we view our own skills and abilities. If we approach them while we are afraid or tense, we may not use them in a productive or creative manner. In these times it’s easy to only see their negative affects. But if we can change our point of view, perhaps we can see these abilities and skills we carry as a blessing. Disney and Pixar attempt to teach us this in their latest release.

Turning Red revolves around the young Meilin Lee (Rosalie Chiang), a Canadian eighth grader. She is an upbeat, albeit slightly annoying, intelligent young girl. She does have the usual teenage obsessions such as fictious boy band named 4-Town. One day after a misunderstanding when her mother Ming (Sandra Oh) called out a teenager for harassing Meilin, our protagonist wakes up in the form of a giant red panda. Eventually, Meilin learns that this transformation runs in her family and that strong emotions can release the panda. She learns that with the help of her mother, a ritual can stop the transformations. While her family encourages Meilin to control it, her close friends and her begin to collect fees for Meilin to take photos and make appearances as the panda. They want to use the money they make from this to attend their favorite boy band 4-Town’s concert. However, the aforementioned concert takes place on the same night that the ritual can be performed. Meilin will have to choose between her love and desire to spend time with her friends, and her responsibility to her family and their traditions.

While telling family stories is not a new frontier for Pixar and Disney, they are still the very best at telling such stories. They manage to manage to balance a little bit of drama and comedy in a wholesome and positive way. They also are able to make relatable and fun characters for us to relate to. Meilin and her friends are a prime example of this. Anyone can watch their actions and relate as we remember the things we did in junior high in pursuit of a band or interest we liked a lot. And now that some viewers of Pixar are older they can relate to the plight of parents who just want their children to be safe and not deal with the same problems they had to deal with, like Ming.

But what would a Pixar movie be without some fun too? The dynamic between Meilin and her core friend group is hilarious. They are constantly doing silly things together and getting into high jinks that make for interesting stories. Visually, the animators really went a little buck wild with some of the gags that they created, invoking a lot of classic anime expressions and even a little bit of monster movie DNA. Plus the quality of the animation remains high as well. The individual hairs on Meilin stand out when she’s on camera as well.

Referring back to theme of gifts that I discussed above, when Meilin beings to see this condition of hers as a benefit rather than a curse she is able to thrive. That’s a powerful for people of all age who may suffer from debilitating issues: whatever plagues them can be a net positive or can be overcome.

The only complaint I have about my viewing experience is that Disney continues to put their Pixar movies on Disney plus for free. I do not intend to complain about having free movies made available to me, but this just seems like a poor financial decision by Disney. While I was not a fan of paying $30 to watch Black Widow last July, it definitely made them some money. Why not try that with their Pixar movies? It can only help their bottom line.

Financial discussions aside, I really enjoyed this movie.

9/10

Until I see another one.