Turning Red, Disney-Pixar's newest film, follows Meilin 'Mei' Lee. She's just turned 13, is in the 8th Grade, and is already one busy go-getter. Problem is, there's a family secret that happens when women turn of age, and now Mei is turning into a Giant Red Panda any time she gets excitable, angry, or upset. Now Mei's got to figure out how to balance this new change in her life, while navigating friends, her mother, and all the pressures of growing up.
For anyone who has been following this movie over the last month or so, I'm sure the topic that it's come under fire hasn't gone unnoticed. The first debacle was when folks were accusing the film of being a 'CalArts' style, because for some reason people now have an issue if you draw an open mouth as a 'bean' shape. But there's literally only so many ways to draw an open mouth; is an anime triangle somehow superior? But the term is nothing more than "I don't like this style", which I don't know why folks don't just simply say that.
The second has been because certain reviews have gone to say that Turning Red is 'too narrow in scope', and was 'alienating' to audiences, as well as just being 'exhausting'. I have my suspicions as to why this was singled out in this movie, and not on something like...we'll say, 'Soul'. But what I can say is, I think this film has a specific audience it's trying to hit, that is often overlooked, and that I watch films for good stories. Doesn't mean my personal tastes are always super keen (I like the Super Mario Bros movie, for instance), but I can say that Turning Red is a way better movie than these detractors are giving it credit for.
Without going too hard into spoilers, the basic description is surprisingly simplistic in terms of the story. Yes, Mei is a 13 year old who is dealing with puberty and all that comes with that, but the story is made up of a bunch of smaller pieces that all fit together.
Mei isn't just dealing with school, but how she is with her friends, her family, and what she actually wants her life to be. Even actions taken by her own family, no matter how good of a place they come from, can actually be abusive when they just make assumptions about what Mei's life should be and not taking into consideration what SHE wants her life to be.
And this is a critical point of the story, is that Mei has to make choices. She wants to do it all and please everyone, but it just can't work out that way. She can stay in step in the path that her mother wants for her, OR she can go with her friends (who she barely gets to see or spend time with) and try to go see the boy-band, 4*Town.
To back up this theme, the film itself is actually set in the year 2002, and part of the music is boy-band music (the teaser and full trailers used music from both Backstreet Boys and N*Sync, to give you an idea of the musical theming). But it's not the only music, as whenever Mei's in danger of 'unleashing the beast', there's a strange classic Chinese track that plays, to imply that this thing from her family's history is ever lurking, and that she's in very real danger to expose her new secret to mass embarrassment.
As for the animation, I've heard mixed responses on character design. They look fine enough to me, and the film is filled with vibrant colors that pop, and the animation is fluid as usual on Pixar films. There's a lot of little details in the background (I guess Luca is hidden somewhere), along with other little nods.
So with those out of the way, I want to move on to the real meat and potatoes. As I mentioned earlier, the film has had detractors saying this film has too narrow a scope, nobody will be able to relate to it, and so on. Some folks are mad that it is 'promoting rebelling against your parents', as if that doesn't happen ALL. THE. TIME. in Disney or Pixar films. That's what makes some of these stories so compelling, is seeing folks go against the grain of society, of relationships, to go on the adventure and come out the other end all the better for it.
I think this is a film that almost ANYONE can actually relate to. Yes, I'm saying that anyone who says otherwise is wrong. Who hasn't gone through puberty? Who hasn't had strife in their life, and had to make tough choices? We all have to do it, be it with family, friends, at work, in relationships...everything we choose to do and say, is us making a choice and missing out on those other things. But this is how we define who and what we are, by what we choose, what we do and say. If we believe something is wrong, we oppose it, and try to make things right. We make decisions that influence not only our lives, but the lives of others as well. It's a painful experience many times, and that shapes how we take on the next challenge, the next choice.
As a white guy in his late 30s, who is in the furry fandom, I've made some of my own choices like this. Growing up as a teenager in the 90s and into the 2000s, for several years there I was all on my own when it came to this side of me. The internet was brand new, and nobody around me was into it that I was aware of. So there was nobody to talk to, nobody there that I could speak frankly with and get advice from. No, much like Mei, I was in a way on my own. I had to seek out people to MAKE those connections, to let being furry be as much a part of me as anything else was...never mind how you get those conflicting little things in your head. The 'Oh, this is for girls, and this is for boys' stigmata of toys, cartoons, let alone anything like...clothes. These are struggles that people have dealt with, and are dealing with. There are just certain expectations that parents have for their children, and at some point what they think of what they want for us isn't what we want for ourselves. That can be difficult to deal with, and sometimes isn't a happy ending.
We all have our inner beasts, and how we decide to take them on is what determines our future. Turning Red, set at a critical point in anyone's life, is a tale of puberty, of family pressures, and of choices. To me, that's going to make it a beloved classic in just a few year's time, once all this riff-raff discordance gets shed fully.
