Turning Red Review

★★★☆☆

Disney Pixar’s newest film Turning Red sees a whirlwind journey through the stages of growing up as a teenage girl in an Asian family: puberty, tiger-parenting, and generational trauma in an embodiment of a fuzzy and adorable red panda.

The film is set twenty years in the past and centers around self-assured and quirky Meilin “Mei” Lee, a Chinese-Canadian 13-year-old girl. Mei has always been a perfectionist. A straight A+ student who takes care of her family temple every day and has a small group of friends that she loves dearly. However, her world is turned upside down one morning when she wakes up as a big red panda.

Mei quickly realises that her extreme emotions control when the red panda comes out. Along with battling her over-protective mother Ming who can’t stop watching her every move and embarrassing her at every corner, this makes it very difficult for her to live the life she’s always known without turning into, in her words, “a gross red monster”. Mei is struck with a moral dilemma, she has to decide whether to live as the perfectionist vision that her mother has of her or to embrace her inner panda.

Although the animation style is quite over-exaggerated and slightly obnoxious, the style is perfect for the setting and feelings they wanted to create for this story with the gags and jokes landing very well due to the hyper and expressive visuals which shows how each character feels extremely well. How the story organically grows into something more complex than just a teenage girl turning into a red panda was beautifully done.

Turning Red is a typical warm-hearted Disney film. However, there is something that makes it stand apart.

It feels like it has been made for everyone: children who love colourful and adorable animals, teenagers going through what Mei is going through, or older teens and adults who have experienced Mei’s story.

We really see director Domee Shi really pour her heart into this film showing teenage adolescence through the eyes of an Asian household and subtly showing her own experience through Mei’s character. It finally gives visibility and representation for not only Asian girls and women but for every woman who has gone through the awkward stages of growing up during the early teenage years and coming to grips with it on such a massive platform such as Disney.

This is an interesting new direction Pixar has decided to go down, showing the hardships of growing up and tugs at the heartstrings of those watching who can relate to Mei’s story, minus turning into a red panda of course.