TURNING RED — Fruitcake Enterprises

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: A
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+
Animation: B

Turning Red is simultaneously about adolescent friendship and about mother-daughter relationships, and it handles both fantastically. The premise seems simple, in which a 13-year-old discovers she transforms into a giant red panda whenver she gets too emotionally excited, but it winds up being a great allegory for multiple shared experiences at once. There’s the idea of “harnessing your inner beast.” There’s acknowledging your “messy side.” There’s the literalness of the title, when an adolescent goes beet red with embarrassment. There’s even a brief sequence in which it effectively stands in as a symbol for when a girl has her period for the first time: “I’m a gross red monster!” One might thing I’m reaching with that one—except it literally happens when Mei’s mother, not yet understanding the true nature of the situation, is trying to offer her pads.

Things like this are surely why Turning Red is rated PG. It’s also the third Pixar movie to be released directly to Disney+, although it’s arguably the first not to be done out of necessity. That said, after having watched it, this film feels right for an at-home streamer. Perhaps we’ve just been spoiled by 27 years of Pixar Animation’s visual excellence, where in many cases the animation largely made up for somewhat waning story quality. Turning Red flips the script, so to speak, and offers animation that is . . . fine. It’s the story that truly elevates it, and makes for a wonderfully cozy, adorable, funny and moving at-home watch.

This movie happens to be the second Pixar film directed by a woman (the first was Brenda Chapman, though she co-directed Brave in 2012 with two men), the first to be solo directed by a woman, and the first to be directed by a woman of color. Domee Shi, who also co-wrote this delightful script, was born in China but grew up in Toronto, and having written largely based on her own family experience, thus provides the explanation for the film’s Toronto setting. Characters mention the city of Toronto regularly, and there are many establishing shots of the Toronto skyline, always with the CN Tower figuring prominently. I just found myself wishing those shots were rendered with a little more depth and personality; instead, they sometimes feel a little like a cartoon version of old movie matte painting backdrops.

Admittedly, this sort of thing was why it took a few minutes for me to really feel hooked into the story of Turning Red. The visual design of the characters themselves are a little “cartoonier” than normal for Pixar, and for the first several minutes we see the establishment of setting and the introduction of characters, particularly Meilin (voiced by 16-year-old newcomer Rosalie Chang) and her diverse group of three best friends (voiced by Ava Morse, Hyein Park and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan). We see them quite pointedly and realistically acting like giddy, sometimes shrill, 13-year-old girls, and for a moment there I wondered if I would be able to tolerate this movie.

But, then we get introduced to Mei’s perfectionist mother, Ming (Sandra Oh), and we understand the central conflict of the story, which is a tension between Mei’s love for her mother and her love for her friends. Domee Shi and her two co-writers, Julia Cho and Sarah Streicher, write about these relationships exceedingly well, never painting anyone involved as inherently malicious. They are just people who make mistakes, who sometimes make misguided decisions in the service of the people they love.

By the time Meilin’s red panda is unleashed, Turning Red takes a quick turn, becoming equal parts entertaining and surprisingly layered, both with thematic meaning and cultural tradition. I love the diversity of both the characters and the voice cast here, not just for its own sake, but more importantly, because it accurately reflects the city in which it’s set: Toronto is one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world, more than half its residents belonging to a visible minority group, and just under half being immigrants born outside the country.

Mei’s family is well established, though, both her and her mother speaking with American accents; only Mei’s grandmother, Wu (voiced by Wai Ching Ho), speaks with a Chinese accent. Cantonese is regularly spoken, particularly when Grandma Wu arrived with reinforcements—both herself and other family members, presumably aunts, who have all at one point participated in a ritual that breaks the family spell of the red panda.

I also love how centered this story is on women and girls. Turning Red is written and directed by a woman, largely based on her childhood experience with several girl friends, and nearly the entire principal cast is girls or women. The most notable male character is Ming’s husband and Mei’s father, Jin (Orion Lee), and even he is written with more dimension than typically found with a part of that size. Which is to say, he doesn’t get a huge amount of screen time, but he is well woven into the fabric of the story.

The focus here, though, is on Mei’s relationship with the girls and the women in her life: her three best friends; her mother; her grandmother. The story even gets into how that mother-daughter relationship is informed by Ming’s relationship with her own mother—an idea relatable to a great many daughters and mothers, regardless of ethnic or cultural background. Were Turning Red made in an earlier cinematic era, most of the story would have revolved around Mei trying to keep her red panda spell a secret. Instead, Mei’s mother, her friends, and most of her classmates learn about it surprisingly early on. What follows is a struggle for Mei to control it, and her mother’s insistence that it needs to be locked away completely. There’s a lot to unpack here in terms of accepting ourselves—and our children—as who they really are, and not so much taming but learning to live with the beast within.

There is a climactic sequence in which an even more giant panda terrorizes a stadium during a boy-band concert, and it’s a little like a red panda version of Godzilla. If that were all it was, I might have rolled my eyes at it. But there is so much depth to this story, even a showy sequence like that works really well. Given Pixar Animation Studio’s increasingly spotty record in recent years, and the somewhat surprising choice to release straight to streaming, Turning Red exceeds expectations on nearly every level . . . except the animation itself. But, as with our relationships with our children and our parents, we can’t always expect perfection.

Overall: B+