Turning Red
DISNEYThe bar has been set so high for Pixar outings that even a film that might be considered amongst another studio’s best output can be seen as more of the same. That’s more or less Turning Red. A heartfelt, beautifully animated, thematically resonant film is standard fare for Pixar at this point. While Turning Red does not break any new ground for Pixar, it is still a thoroughly entertaining and resonant film that captures the awkwardness of a teenage girl’s formative years with blunt but accurate strokes.
The film centers on 13-year-old Meilin “Mei” Lee, a Chinese-American girl living in Toronto in 2002. One day, she begins turning into a giant red panda whenever she’s in a state of high emotion. Although a thinly veiled metaphor for a girl’s adolescent tribulations – her mother thinks she is having her first period – and sticking to the tried-and-true Pixar trope of people turning into animals – in the two most recent releases as well, Luca and Soul – the script by Julia Cho and Domee Shi hits all of the right notes.
The conflicts between Mei and her family, Mei and her friends, and Mei and herself are all handled with empathy and done in a very relatable way. The film finds its cleverest metaphor with the way Mei’s friends have the ability to keep the red panda under control, even in situations of high frustration. Friends often do have that ability in real life as well, even sans giant red panda transfiguration.
The one knock on the film’s themes could be the message about embracing the dark parts of oneself along with the good parts. Although delivered in a truly chills-inducing monologue by Orion Lee as Mei’s father, the rest of the film fails to fully explicate what exactly that means in its overall context. The idea might have been to implicate that negative emotions are just as important as positive ones, but that was already one in a far more nuanced way in 2015’s Inside Out.
Scribe Shi (of Bao fame) also serves as director, and she helms the picture with a knack for visual detail and well-crafted sequences of suspense. Although there is little action – except for one large-scale set-piece at the end that did not need to be so big – Shi wrings the most possible comedy and tension out of numerous sequences, such as the one where Ming discovers her daughter’s secret drawings of her crush or the party sequence that results in an argument with Mei’s friends. Nearly every Pixar film is well-animated and choreographed, but this one is particularly strong in those departments.
Besides the strong work of Lee in a relatively minor role, the rest of the voice cast is quite talented as well. Rosalie Chiang, only 16 years old, is already a budding actress. If she did not work, the entire movie might falter, but thankfully she turns in a superb vocal performance, capturing the exuberant highs as well as the cringe-inducing lows of Mei’s teenage life. Sandra Oh might be the strongest player of the impressive cast, fully inhabiting the overprotective mother that could have easily fallen victim to cliché.
The movie is tied together with a funky fusion of Western and Chinese influences in a score delivered by Ludwig Göransson, who continues to defy genre with his music. This score sounds nothing like the composer’s work on Black Panther, Tenet, or The Mandalorian, but still manages to effectively pull at the audience’s heartstrings for this film.
And then there is the One Direction-esque boy band 4*Town, with songs written by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell (with the latter providing one of the boy band’s members’ voices). The catchy tunes the duo came up with serve as an emotional center for Mei, whose friend group is obsessed with 4*Town. They are even written into the climax in a cheeky way that nevertheless fully works.
While not at the top of Pixar’s ranking, a mid-tier Pixar film is still a great film, and Turning Red is a well-executed, relatable film with some very strong aspects that help it become an ultimately memorable experience.
