Turning Red caught me by surprise, and not all the way in the good direction. My wife suggested I should do a review about something that maybe I didn’t 100 percent love, so that’s what this is. Now, I didn’t hate this movie by any stretch of the imagination. But it’s Pixar, and I walked out of a Pixar movie thinking it was safe.
If you haven’t seen it, please go watch it first, because we’re going to have some spoilers.
Turning Red is the story of Mei Lee. She’s a 13 year old girl who’s torn between being her mother’s obedient daughter and the chaos of her youth. As if that weren’t enough, when she gets too excited she turns into a big red panda. That’s literally the synopsis for this movie.
The Technique Is the Pinnacle
I really thought the animation technique was great. There’s a couple of scenes, specifically early on when Meilin is going through her transformations and she’s trying to hide from people. She’s in the bathroom and they just pan around, and that is unbelievable. The perspective shifts nice and beautiful, the fur is unreal, the tiles look unbelievable. You can definitely tell it’s the pinnacle of what they’ve been trying to do, the height of the CGI technique they’ve learned over the years. I very much enjoyed the look of the whole thing overall.
The world they created felt very lived in, so much so that you could easily see more tales in this world. I know Disney’s been doing some things with Pixar, possibly doing some more animated series. If they took the same approach they do with, let’s say, the MCU or Star Wars in terms of giving us high budget series, you could easily see 12 episodes, little half hour chunks, telling an arcing story in this world. Love that.
The Puberty Story Is Dead On
I think the representation of puberty, and the insanity that happens whether you’re a boy or a girl, is dead on.
I remember, as an artist, drawing my feelings and drawing my emotions and drawing my fantasies, if you will, at a young age, sort of trying to figure things out. This was dead on. I identified with that whole losing your mind thing, where you’re like, what am I doing, what’s going on, how am I feeling these things. That whole your head’s going to explode thing. I really appreciated it.
It Kind of Felt Like a Grubhub Commercial
For me, one of the things that didn’t work was the animation style. It’s why I made the distinction between technique and style. Technique is the execution, and I think they did that in exemplary fashion. The actual style kind of felt like a Grubhub commercial.
I get what they were going for. But once you got into the nuance of the characters, and I’m going to rap myself in the mouth here, they look cartoony. It’s a cartoon, what do you expect. Or a modern day version of a cartoon. I know it’s a completely stylistic choice, using those jelly bean looking bodies and expressions and whatnot. But at the end of the day I didn’t feel like it served the story as well as they may have wanted it to.
The Supernatural Side Needed More
The supernatural aspect, which I believe stems from Asian myth and lore, coming from a Chinese region or that area, I don’t know. I don’t know this particular myth and its little through line. But obviously we’re no strangers on this side of the world to werewolf stories or transformation stories or Jekyll and Hyde type stuff. Family curses. I mean, just look at Teen Wolf, the original version, not the TV show, though the TV show did the same thing.
The thing is, it wasn’t enough. I would’ve wanted a lot more, and I feel like we didn’t get that. What they gave us felt like, hey, we need some sort of phlebotinum or some sort of a MacGuffin to get you from A to B in our story, and here it is. To me that’s sort of weak writing. I would’ve liked to have lived in that and experienced that more. If you give us more of that through line, more of what it’s supposed to be, then I feel like we would’ve had an easier time going with them.
I’m trying not to spoil every single thing, but toward the end there’s a part where Meilin, Mei Mei if you will, and her mother and her mother’s sisters, her aunts and everyone else, are all dealing with the aftermath of what’s happened. They’re in this sort of spiritual place, and it looks like a big bamboo forest. Very beautiful scene, gorgeous scenery, very well done.
But it didn’t have the impact I think they might’ve wanted it to, because we were so ingrained in Meilin’s story. Her and her friends and this concert. There was a lot of hype there, and I felt fully immersed in that through line. Then you had this overriding supernatural story, and I wanted more from it to pull me in. As a result it felt like extra. It was superfluous. Not spending enough time there was kind of to the story’s detriment.
My Hot Take: Disney+ Was the Right Call
Let me go to my controversial hot take right now. If I don’t get hate comments about this I’ll be surprised, but I’m going to jump in.
I think it was absolutely the right decision to have this be on Disney+.
That has nothing to do with representation. I love these stories. I enjoyed Crazy Rich Asians. I enjoyed Shang-Chi. I enjoyed living in this world, in this Asian culture, and I’m a big fan of it. This has nothing to do with that and everything to do with the movie. The story overall was kind of weak, though I liked what they did. The supernatural aspect was kind of weak, though I liked what they did. And the animation itself didn’t seem unique enough.
I feel like the last place you want to borrow your inspiration from is the modern day animation trends happening in corporate America. I don’t think that was the case here. But corporate America may be buying a little too much into that look, because now when you use it in this animation, it felt lost in translation, if you will.
We’ve seen the coming of age story, but we haven’t seen it through this lens. Okay, fine. Then you need to immerse me in that lens, and I didn’t feel immersed in the lens. I love the fact that she’s a Canadian girl as well, so you had that whole cultural aspect at the same time.
The Red Panda, and the Uncomfortable Conversations
I think they sold the young teenage girl story very well. And I’m not in the Facebook mom groups where they’re freaking out about whatever.
My 16 year old did say she thought it was hilarious that they used a red panda as the stand-in for women’s issues, the monthly issues and whatnot. I’m trying my best to tiptoe here, people, because that’s how she took it. She took the red panda as an allegory of that, and maybe it was supposed to be. I don’t know. I make no judgments.
I had a couple of people telling me they felt like this is definitely a sit home with your kid movie. Maybe your kid’s home sick, or you’re just taking the day off and you want to relax and watch something fun with your kids. This is definitely the thing to do.
On the other side, I had another friend of mine, a single dad, who said this introduced a whole lot of uncomfortable stuff that he suddenly had to talk about. I don’t know that that’s a bad thing. I don’t know that that’s going to be the defense for some people, because I’m like, hey, you know what, uncomfortable conversations happen.
The Verdict
Turning Red gets a 7.5 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index, and that’s probably my lowest rating yet.
Why? I felt like everything that was good got balanced out. That’s the curve. When you grade on the curve, that’s what you have. I think the story itself could’ve been stronger. I think the connecting points could’ve been stronger. But overall it’s a fun movie, I think it’s perfectly placed on Disney+, and you should absolutely check it out.
Pixar always tells us a little bit about ourselves, and that’s the thing I’m looking forward to more. I know there are people talking about this, that and the other with this one. This was a safe movie. Period.
There were definitely cringey parts. But I tell you what, overall you’re going to have fun with this. Am I going to watch it again and again and again? I don’t know that it bears repeat viewings. But I watched it the first time and had a really good time with it, and I think you will too.
I’d love to hear your take on Turning Red. Did my review make you turn red, either by embarrassment or anger? The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
