Why Turning Red is the Pixar movie we need right now
The studio packs more universal human truths than ever into its most culturally specific story yet
Film Features Turning Red
Roger Ebert once called movies “a machine that generates empathy,” and there’s almost no studio that manufactures that product better or more consistently than Pixar. Starting with its earliest films, the animation powerhouse has given viewers an opportunity to see themselves, and others, from a variety of perspectives—parent or child, savior or scoundrel, instigator or spectator, and so on. Turning Red is by far Pixar’s most sophisticated character portrait to date, and one of its most challenging, albeit not necessarily for reasons tied to the film’s skilled and joyful cultural and geographic specificity.
Director Domee Shi’s film could not have arrived at a more important moment, putting complex Asian characters (and specifically, multiple generations of women) at the center of a story that explores and celebrates their multi-dimensionality. Turning Red also reflects a new level of refinement in Pixar’s animation, which increasingly reveals direct and immediate human (as opposed to toy, bug, car, robot, anthropomorphized emotion) experiences. The result provides reassurance to those who share these experiences in real life, and an opportunity for those who don’t.
Set in 2002 Toronto, the film follows Meilin Lee (an irrepressible Rosalie Chiang), a self-possessed but dutiful 13-year-old girl who awakens one morning to discover that she’s been transformed into a gigantic red panda by her raging adolescent hormones. The catalyst that Pixar chooses here is the first example of its creators’ storytelling shrewdness: As easy (and appropriately) as it might have been to use the beast as cuddly stand-in for the girl’s first menstrual cycle, Shi instead implements it as a metaphor for the volatility of fledgling adult emotions, something that everyone in the audience has experienced, or will.
Meilin’s newfound predicament comes as no surprise to her mother Ming (Sandra Oh), who is determined to be helpful (perhaps to a fault), and encourages her to be patient until the Lee family can perform a ritual to exorcise the panda’s spirit. But after learning that an all-important boy band concert falls on the same night as the ritual—and the only way to get tickets not only involves exploiting her panda alter ego for cash, but actively lying to her mom for the first time—Meilin must juggle Ming’s expectations as she navigates her own evolving sense of empowerment, fearing the chance of disappointing parents to whom she’s always been obedient while delicately taking her first important steps into adulthood.
Chinese Canadian director and co-writer Shi set her first feature film in the context of her own upbringing (she was 15 in 2002), and viewers from that region (and background) will undoubtedly recognize much within Meilin’s landscape. But what’s so compelling about the story is how little effort is required to find a point of view with which to relate, even if you’re not Canadian, or Chinese, or a girl.
More than a little bit like Pixar’s wonderful Inside Out, Turning Red tells a powerful story about adolescence, fitting in, and finding oneself at a time when emotional responses to the world can be the most difficult to manage. Teenage volatility seems to be a mental state that adults have consistent trouble remembering, but Shi brings it sharply into focus, first as Meilin unexpectedly develops her first teenage sex-adjacent crush on a boy, and then as she is faced with the challenge of controlling her emotions in junior high school, a time of life that seems full of triggers.
But more than that, Meilin is a child who has always received the approval of her parents. She doesn’t want to jeopardize that, even if it means letting her mom unfairly vilify her friends, and enduring well-meaning efforts that embarrass her. Even if your dynamic as a child wasn’t one of constantly seeking approval, the movie highlights how paralyzing that experience can be to a friend or acquaintance who was (or still is).
Ming, meanwhile, is classically overprotective of Meilin—not just of her health and safety, but of the perception she has created of her daughter as innocent and perfect. The reveal that Ming clashed explosively with her own mother during adolescence offers real insight both into the reasons that she hovers over Meilin, passing along the same behaviors she experienced and responded to as a teenager, as well as the earnest if misguided work she does to prevent her daughter from going down the same path, experiencing it now from the point of view of the mom to a girl who’s growing up whether she’s ready or not. There’s also the manifestation of Ming’s own panda, a monstrous and fearsome expression of anger that personifies the feeling many people have when their own parents express dissatisfaction.
There are, of course, culturally reinforced explanations for some of these behaviors, including fealty to the family unit, deference to elders, and so forth. But all of that only adds dimensionality and specificity to these more universal dynamics that the characters act out—and all of that exists in many other cultures that aren’t Chinese. Parents have been shaping their daughters and driving them crazy at the same time for millennia (and not just moms).
The teenage girls here obsess over and romanticize their Backstreet Boys and ’N Sync proxies (Billie Eilish and Finneas approximate their pre-fab ear candy with merciless if affectionate accuracy). But there have been teen idols like them for decades, which previous generations almost invariably worried were corrupting the youth and loosening collective morals. Is there anybody who hasn’t at least briefly developed a completely nonsensical crush on an artist or actor, album, or piece of pop culture ephemera and let that drive them to make some questionable decisions (or at least decisions that their parents wouldn’t necessarily think were the right ones)?
A bit more conventionally, there are the not-so-subtle strains of Teen Wolf that this film echoes as well, charting the panda’s initial novelty and appeal to Meilin’s classmates to a perhaps inevitable moment when that alter ego gets out of control and scares the people who previously idolized her. But you don’t have to be a teenager, or a mom, or even remember what it was like to be either one of those things to find someone to connect to in the film. Meilin’s father Jin (Orion Lee) casts a light shadow in comparison to his aggressively involved wife, but he’s always there watching, and offering his insights when they’re most needed, even if no one thought to ask him for them.
While the design and the details are different here, the sensation for viewers is similar to what it was like watching Toy Story back in 1995: Are you the kid playing make-believe with your toys? The parent watching your child move on from their playthings, and by extension, from you? The de facto group leader watching your assumed authority get usurped? The newcomer discovering important truths about what came before you?
Its impact depends less on how determined you are to see your own point of view reflected than on how open you are to understanding others’ viewpoints. The studio’s creators have become experts in delivering a panorama of perspectives, and 27 years later, Pixar has preserved these core principles while improving on the way they’re used in its stories.
Ultimately, a film doesn’t have to be about you, or be from what you perceive is your perspective, for it to resonate with you, and even enlighten you. Pixar not only creates this variety of viewpoints, but thinks each of them through so that they are complex and dimensionalized. And Turning Red evidences that approach, and that skill, extraordinarily well—as long as you’re willing to give yourself over to what you can get from their films instead of what you’re already bringing to them.
130 Comments
This is more of a review than your official review.
Apart from completely failing to make a case for why we “need” this movie “right now”
Well, shit. And all this time, I never realized art needed a reason to exist beyond someone just wanting to make it.
This was a pretty good review, but I guess the whole conversation around this movie’s gonna revolve around that cinemablend review, huh.
A large number of the old writers are gone, and new writers are coming in. I don’t think it’s surprising (or a problem) if commenters are particularly wary in the coming weeks and months about pieces that suggest a direction for the site they don’t like.
To be fair, it’s something that I’ve seen the former writers been talking about though—I know this because I’ve resorted to looking at their Twitter accounts in the hopes it’ll lead me to good pop culture coverage (DAMN YOU SHITTY G/O MANAGEMENT).Edit: reread your comment, I think you may have missed that the OP was talking about a review of this movie from elsewhere that was widely criticized for being racist/sexist.
I did not get to read that review before it got taken down and I have not watched the movie yet(Friday is family movie night with the kids) but from what I have read of the coverage of the review, it sounds like a lot of “You didn’t like a movie about ME, thus you are a RACISTS!!” twitter banter. I have to watch the movie but ever review I have seen sounds like it is a very specific story, places in a time with certain characters and maybe that is not as universal some people would like. Its shitty that a review of a person saying the movie did not connect with them gets pulled down because of the social media crying.
Twitter again reinforcing its status as the Worst Thing in the World.The beef with the original review was that it was so light on detail that you could barely tell what the film was about. It was mostly cultural commentary on the existence of the film at all. I.e. you didn’t miss anything.
I think Nilus is talking about the Cinemablend review, not the AV Club’s.
Ah. Re-reading, you’re probably right. Point stands, though – the original AVC review was not especially enlightening.
I think one white guy saying “I do not relate to this movie not about white guys” is not a good take. Then you either realize that 1. You are the wrong person to review this movie or 2. You are incapable of opening yourself up to the experiences of others who are different than you and please refer back to #1.The whole reason moves and TV have had a representation problem is because those in charge of deciding what people will like have said “I don’t get this and so it is not as good as other things that are relatable to me.” There’s no reason to perpetuate it. No one ever talks about a coming of age story about a white boy being too specific or not universal enough. That language is extremely coded. As evidenced in this article, everyone can find something to relate to in any story about another human being no matter how specific it is if that story centers on emotions and relationships. We all have emotions and relationships.
The main problem is I can’t actually read the original review because it was taken down after backlash. So I only have small excerpts in other articles to compare to and I didn’t think what the reviewer said was to bad in those snips. It seemed like Twitter blowing something way out of proportion again.
Those snippets are entirely representative of the review and the reason it was taken down. I just explained why. To say a story isn’t relatable enough because it’s about a girl and a girl who is Asian is ridiculous. Especially when some kids movies about mermaids with dead mothers pursuing a person they just met and abandoning their remaining family so they can marry a stranger at 16. Or about a poor orphan who gets a magical genie and uses it to become the ruler of an entire country. Or an orphan who is raised by animals and longs to find their place in the human world. No one says “these stories are not relatable enough.” It’s coded language to say “this person’s not white or male, which is not normal to most people.”
Watched the movie tonight with the kids and I can get what the reviews was getting at. The movie does feel like it was written from a very hyper focused perspective and it’s feel different then most American movies. We enjoyed it well enough but I can see if you are maybe a single white man without kids that there isn’t much here for you to relate too.
Yet funnily enough, everyone is expected to relate to movies about the experiences of the average white man. They make about a million of ‘em a day.If you don’t see how the take that “this movie focusing on the experience of -someone else- is totally unrelatable to me” as a negative point in a review sucks, I probably can’t help you much, but consider this: is the point of movies to just show you experiences similar to your own? I don’t think so. We don’t seem to have any trouble relating to movies about mafia goons or god-like superheroes despite those being about as far from the average experience as it gets, but being a young Asian girl from Canada is a bridge too far? Maybe if one does not understand that experience, one could, I don’t know… watch a movie that is actually -explaining- it, and learn a new thing. I’ve always believed that’s kind of the point of storytelling.Also, just to be clear, the guy at Cinemablend very clearly saw the supposed unrelatability as a negative. Not just “not for me”. He calls not relating to that experience “exhausting” in a tweet. If a person finds it exhausting to experience a story about someone other than himself, he shouldn’t be reviewing films.
I would think that struggling with parental expectations, being trapped on the cusp between childhood and adulthood, and not feeling like yourself as you age and change, is something most people should be able to relate to.
it’s feel different then most American movies First of all, it’s set in Canada. Second, please recognize this is a bad take that makes it seem like any story even slightly ethnic or cultural is not “American.” Any country where immigrants live (which is every country) has stories exactly like this.
Did I say it wasn’t American? I said it felt different then most American movies. I think you have a preconceived notion of who you think I am or what my opinion of this movie is and are making some very broad assumptions.
Did I say you said it was American? No. I’m saying there may be very obvious reasons why it feels different from most American movies that have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the main character is a Chinese-Canadian girl. I think you’re feeling really defensive over your opinion and that of the Cinemablend guy. And as I said before, if you don’t think story like Aladdin or Mulan or Cinderella is too specific to have universal appeal, than neither is Turning Red. A lot of kids movies have animals as the characters and somehow people think this human child in Turning Red is “too specific” to be identified with.
You seem fun.
Single white men without kids can’t relate to the pains of adolescence, awkward steps into adulthood, and parental expectations? You’re selling the movie short. Granted it approached these things from a female angle but I don’t think it’s that difficult to find relatable emotions and experiences in the story.
True, the story was told from a teenage female perspective, but some of those puberty-specific anxieties are pretty universal. Even though the film leaned heavily into the Tiger Mom stereotype, these kinds of mothers aren’t limited to Chinese heritage.
It’s the only take. Not everything has to be for white people. White people are not going to get movies not made for them, nor should they pretend to.
“everyone can find something to relate to in any story about another human being no matter how specific it is if that story centers on emotions and relationships”Depends on the emotions and relationships, surely
Or maybe.
1.) His opinion as a white guy is just as valid as someone else’s.
2.) He is perfectly capable of opening up to other experiences, but still didn’t like the movie, which in that case see #1.
It’s okay for a reviewer to have a different view of a movie than another reviewer. That’s why there are multiple reviews. Why is their opinion less valid than others because of their skin color? A little racist much?
The original AV Club review gave the movie an A rating, but really didn’t elaborate on what made the film so great other than the cast and ‘Asian representation”. Everything else I’ve read about this film from other sources makes me believe that it probably is quite good, mainly for doing what Pixar usually does so well, and in no way is it particular to one subset of one culture and one particular time and place.I doubt that the original reviewer gave the film such high marks only for the cast and Asian/Canadian characters, but it was so poorly written that it came off that way.
Haven’t seen it yet. Gonna watch it tonight but the only preconception I have is that it’s supposed to be relatable to tweens/teens but the fact that it takes place in 2002, which by today’s standards defines the end of a whole different era, makes it difficult not to think that this movie is more about the writer/director than anything relatable to a wide audience. I guess you could substitute K-Pop for Boy Bands of yesteryear but it was still a very different environment where kids weren’t buried in their phones on TikTok and Instagram.It’s a nitpick and probably doesn’t take away from film’s quality but early 2000’s just seems like an odd choice for coming of age animated film. If it took place in the 1800’s or the early to mid 1900’s, I get it. That’s like a true period piece.
Having watched it, I concluded that various plot points would make less sense if everyone carried around a smart phone with a camera and video capabilities, but it still needed to be set in an era where some portable AV equipment wouldn’t be completely inaccessible to a group of young teenage girls. And maybe they would have needed to pay money to use the name “Rogers Centre”, so it had to be set before the name change from the Sky Dome. So, basically, late 90s to pre-2005.
I also saw it, with an open mind. It was fine, nothing spectacular. It’s a personal story that women can and some who grew up with certain families can relate to. Better than Encanto, imo but I enjoyed Luca more.
Being set in 2002 makes this movie a period piece in two senses!
I hate that it took me 5 seconds to get this.
I don’t know if “period piece” is the correct term here, usually to count as a period piece a movie has to be set at least 20 years in the paOH MY GOD.
Except its kind of a weird 2002 Toronto – watching it with my friend tonight we both kept seeing things that we’re really temporally out of place, from the colour of the money to range hybrid streetcars that vaguely look like the 2002 models but then have big electric chairlifts they didn’t have until modern times.It’s more an idealized Toronto – a pastiche of everything about Toronto that used to be great with a few modern improvements. At the very least, it was nice being the old skyline again.
Giggling that you do not consider 2002 to be “modern times”. 🙂
Do you consider 20 years ago to be modern times?
World historians date the modern eras (early and late) from the 1400s to the 1900s. We are currently living in the post-modern era. U.S. historians would call anything post WWII the modern era. More colloquially, I would consider of anything in my lifetime to be modern, and I’m 55. Anyway, just a giggle, not a guffaw.
I was just glad to see an attempt to animate Toronto, when they could have just as easily (and lazily) placed this story in NYC or LA. I even found myself thinking that the party scene looked like one of the wealthier areas of Etobicoke.
Funny, this feature feels like a review and the actual review fells like a feature article.
Considering how the AV Club’s review of Turning Red already touched on all these themes (at the expense of talking about stuff like plot, pacing, voice acting, animation quality, etc.), I don’t really see the point of rehashing, yet again, how the movie is Important and Good. And to be clear: I’m excited to see Turning Red! It’s just that if the site wants to talk about the film across multiple articles I’d prefer if the discussion went a little beyond surface level “here are the things in the movie that are morally good.” Like, here’s an opportunity to critically assess Asian representation in film and how it’s changed over time, for instance.
I have to admit; I did click on this article half-wondering if it would be an actual movie review.But seriously, I get it; Asian people are being represented and that’s great! It would just be nice to know some reasons why the reviewers around here think this movie is worth seeing on top of that.
See I didn’t feel this article or the review leaned heavily into the Asian angle, beyond perhaps the Tiger Mom stereotype. This sounds to be much more about the transition to adulthood in general, as experience by the girl and all of the people around her. But I agree that it has taken the original review plus this article for me to begin stitching together what the movie is actually about. The review especially told us only that it was about an adolescent girl who turns into a red panda when angry and the ritual to fix that is scheduled for the same night as a concert by her favorite band. That’s pretty thin.
Yeah, that’s fair; I was admittedly being a bit glib. This article’s actually alright.
FUCK YO…oh shit, you were being cool. Nevermind! Yeah, this article put out a much better perspective on the film. I think it looks fun and won’t worry about whether it will match my social outlook.
This should have been a For Our Consideration article.
It’s absolutely delightful and all the human characters in it are excruciatingly real….. I laughed out loud several times and teared up a little bit too. Oh just watch it why do you need a review to tell you to watch an A grade Pixar film?
See, things like that would have been nice in the actual review. As for “why do you need a review to tell you to watch an A grade Pixar film”… well, because the whole point of a review is to tell me whether it’s an A-grade Pixar film or not, and to give some reasons why. I’m not a precog.
. . . And we are all pretty happy about that.
Being fair, I think this is both way better written than the first review, and functions (marginally) better as an actual review.
Agreed! And this piece seems to be specifically a response to some Cinemablend dipshit (of whom I wasn’t aware until someone in the grays mentioned him) who said the movie was too Asian and Canadian and Asian-Canadian for him to relate to it. That’s some pretty important context, as otherwise the piece comes across as “you know that thing we think is great?…well, we still think it’s great.”
Why do we (as a society) pay attention to idiots? Idiots gonna idiot. Let them. Ignore them. As the great Andy Williams once sang, just don’t look. If people would just ignore these morons, instead of engaging with their desperate cries for attention, instead of giving them the ears and eyes they do desperately crave, instead of voting them into political offices, they’ll disappear! Don’t give them attention, don’t give them the satisfaction of getting into your head, that’s all they ever want. Remember kindergarten, remember grade school, and don’t engage with the bullies of the world. Why do we forget? Anyway. Soapbox rant over, I didn’t mean to get carried away, but gosh, this tendency of society has been bothering me for a while now. It’s such an easy fix, and people are so willfully obstinate.
The people voting assholes into political office don’t want them to disappear. And there are a lot of them.Turns out if you leave toxicity unchallenged, it winds up taking over.
or you end up throwing fuel on a fire while patting yourself on the back for “making a difference”
As the great Andy Williams once sang, just don’t look.
God, I hate being that guy, but it was Paul Anka.
It’s got Paul Anka’s guarantee!(Guarantee void in Tennessee)
The thrust of the Cinemablend review was that the movie was laser-focused on teenage girls, to the point of alienating non-teenage-girl viewers. It mentioned the hyper-specific Asians-in-Toronto setting exactly once, in service of the larger point.Then the usual Twitter dipshits wilfully misinterpreted it for likes and RTs and here we are
Teaches children to disobey parents!!!I bet these morons stopped watching when the mentrual pads appeared.
This article, at least, doesn’t seem to comport itself as a “review”, and actually delves a great deal more into the movie itself than the AV Club did.
I do wonder if this article even exists because of the backlash to the actual review…
I’ll be honest, as I was reading this, I was kind of going through a checklist in my head of the comments from the original review. Yup, addressed that issue, yup, mentioned that, yup, there’s that point…Which, honestly, I’m kind of impressed with—if this is basically a mea culpa on the original “review”, it at least shows that someone, somewhere is actually reading comments/thinking about what’s been written even after it’s been posted. That kind of engagement hasn’t been around for a while.
Your mouth to God’s ears.
Yeah, no this is an actual review, not just a “thank god we acknowledge being represented”.
Unlike the official review, though, this one talks about why the movie is good. It talks about the metaphors and issues the movie uses and tackles, respectively. It’s not just “Asian cast good” over and over. I feel like a deeper examination of the subject of Asian representation in film should be its own thing separate from the review itself.
Did we read the same thing? The headline for this one is kinda clickbaity, but this piece does delve much further into the themes of the film that the official AVC “review” didn’t touch on at all—growing up, forging your identity, clashing with parents as a tween—and how they’d resonate with a wide audience. It only talks about the cultural specificity to say it was well done and adds depth, but that the experiences it draws on are relatable regardless of your background. The actual review sucked and did a disservice to this movie by not going into more detail about the many ways it was good, but it’s also annoying and sad that talk about representation/cultural specificity is dismissed as surface level and poc have to constantly justify our narratives with how white people would like them. This isn’t directed at you specifically and I get that a movie review should take a wider scope, just something that’s been bothering me about an attitude in some of the comments here and on the original review.
Adieu, commentariat …
To be clear: not leaving, necessarily, but noticing that many have.
That, or they’ve been banished to the greys
Right, good point.
This sentence seemed pretty questionable: “Turning Red also reflects a new level of refinement in Pixar’s animation, which increasingly reveals direct and immediate human (as opposed to toy, bug, car, robot, anthropomorphized emotion) experiences.”It’s like the author hasn’t watched a Pixar movie since 2006. The days when Pixar was picking stories to tell based on limitations of what it could animate have been over for a while. Pixar has made Up, The Incredibles and its sequel, Brave, Inside Out, Coco, Soul, and Luca, all of which had a lot of emotional human characters.
Never let the facts get in the way of a narrative.
The reviewer seems to either be a shill or woefully inadequate at actually reviewing a movie. I used to use av club to decide if a movie was worth seeing, but I guess I’ll have to use my own judgment now.
I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of the animation. Personally, I find the animation uninspiring and ugly. I felt the same way about Soul, but less so with Luca. The animation seems very goofy and overdramatized which makes it harder for me to take the film’s emotional/important parts as seriously—I’ll expand on that momentarily. I did enjoy parts of this movie. The cast was absolutely terrific. I appreciated the incorporation of Canadian and Chinese cultural elements. It also felt like it was truly Domee Shi’s movie and she was at least trying to do something a little different by incorporating tinges of manga/anime. Unfortunately, there are some huge tonal and structural issues with Turning Red. First of all, the title and concept. It’s so on the nose that it’s almost patronizing. So on the nose it blows past metaphorical to farcical. I really don’t get what’s supposed to be taken seriously or not. The mom is cartoonishly embarrassing making it difficult to buy in on any levity/serious emotion the film is trying to convey in the mom/daughter relationship. An even bigger problem is that all the characters except Meilin are flat. The dad, the friends, side characters gets no backstory. The mom gets a hint of a backstory but there’s nothing there…not even skin deep. Why didn’t the grandma approve of the dad? What problems did the mom have when she was Meilin’s age? We get hints at these things but not much more. despite the authors statement, most adults do remember adolescence. Those youthful obsessions usually have some backstory even if it’s irrational…where is that w the girls and the boy band? I also don’t find this movie to be particularly sentimental in any way. There are some 00’s Easter Eggs like Tamigachi and flip phones, but nothing that really tells us why the setting and time are actually important and unique to the story. Boy bands don’t count since they’ve existed for a long time. Unfortunately this movie was a good script shy of being terrific. Also, we really don’t get any serious conversations about growing up/going through puberty, just the comedy scene when Meilin wakes up. I actually agree w Sean Oconnel’s review comparing this movie unfavorably to Mitchell’s Vs the Machines.
I think what he’s getting at is this movie is the most focused on ordinary human experiences and feels the most in our ordinary human world—besides the magical panda transformation and the usual heightened movie hijinks, a lot of it is not fantastical. Inside Out is close but the system of emotions is not so run of the mill, while much of Up is close takes place on a remote island or in the sky. Also most of the movies you listed were made in the last ten years so I think it’s fair say they along with this film mark a shift in Pixar’s stories.
I agree the setting was less fantastical, but I am not sure that supports the original claim that Turning Red “reveals direct and immediate human (as opposed to toy, bug, car, robot, anthropomorphized emotion) experiences” notably more so than other recent Pixar movies.I also agree such a turning point happened, but I think it happened with Up. Before that, Pixar was in fact featuring Toys, Bugs, Monsters, Fish, Cars, Rats, and Robots. The Incredibles is an exception, and it stood out, but so much so it almost didn’t seem like a Pixar movie.Starting with Up, the new content (meaning excluding sequels) was mostly about humans—Up, Brave, Inside Out, Coco, Onward (I mean come on, they were basically humans), Soul, Luca, and Turning Red. The Good Dinosaur is the one exception, and again to me it stands out (now in a bad way).And I do think that was in part because their house animation got to the point it was doable. But I don’t think it Turning Red is more than just another example of that, and 2009 (Up) is quite a while ago now.
We’re pretty much in agreement, I just take the writer’s statement (“Turning Red also reflects a new level of refinement in Pixar’s animation, which increasingly reveals direct and immediate human experiences”) to mean that Turning Red is indicative of how Pixar’s storytelling has been evolving, rather than this movie being the turning point. But this one did feel notable to me in how ordinary (as in closer to real life than magic) the world and main characters are. Admittedly this is open to interpretation and I haven’t seen all the recent movies so I may be wrong.
I’ve seen the film now and jesus, that review is exhausting and written in an incredibly patronising manner, and it’s also filled with spoilers, I’m so glad I’ve seen it already or I’d have been extremely annoyed.
As for the film itself, well, about 90% of it is pretty wonderful, it’s playful, smart, funny and insightful, but 10% of it hammers home its central message in such an unsubtle way, over and over again, that it feels like they don’t trust the audience to see what the main themes are in the slightest, and for me that stops it from being up there with Pixar’s very best films.
Almost as if they think a movie for children who haven’t heard the messages in it before needs to be less subtle than a movie intended for adults who can pick up on subtext!
Plenty of Pixar movies don’t have to hammer the subtext though and work great
Yeah, “Are you the kid playing make-believe with your toys? The parent watching your child move on from their playthings, and by extension, from you?” alone made me well up. (I’m the latter).
Except that the Toy Story movies don’t focus on the mom at all. It’s the toys who have the existential crisis about their obsolescence.
With all due respect, did you read what I quoted? I assume you don’t have kids because from a parent’s perspective the Toy Story movies have a very different impact. There’s a reason grown adults bust out crying in these things.
The mom is there. She’s there. I saw her. I am her.
Pixar has been getting really fucking preachy, but then again… so has everyone else. We live in a fucking preachy age. I don’t think anyone can have a good time anymore without worrying about other people. Hopefully we get to a place beyond all this growth, otherwise no wonder we get Trumpers.
Have you seen it though? It’s not just mentioned once or twice, but shouted at the audience over and over again.
And kids are way smarter than this movie gives them credit for.
I hadn’t when I wrote that but I just did and don’t really get the complaint. What exactly was overdone? I thought it was nice having the twist of the mother also having felt forced to be perfect in her youth to be well done. It’s really like that. Not that I’m Chinese, but Jewish parents often also have this desire to control their children and use guilt in a similar way to enforce obedience.
While watching the film, I thought despite the Canadian-Chinese veneer, this story could just as easily have been about a girl of Jewish or Italian heritage. Heck, apart from the menstrual period and Boy Band aspects, this story rang true to me, being a male of mostly German and Lithuanian background.
its almost as if children are actually more perceptive than adults give them and credit and also place Pixar films on some pedestal and think they are above any criticism
You’re joking, right? It doesn’t even touch Cars in terms of quality. This movie has the storytelling maturity of a mall sensory ride.
What did you find unsubtle? I found it thematically rich with interesting dimensions on the characters’ motivations.
I don’t doubt this is a good movie (we’re talking Pixar, here, usually more reliable than not). But this article did a much, much better job justifying the “A” rating given by the original AVClub review. As an aside, I’m more interested to see their animated facsimile of Toronto than I was the “fantasy” world of Onward, which looked about as interesting as suburban Ohio (I get that was the point, but it still didn’t make the setting any more interesting).
Way too many words, and most of them didactic. Pixar rarely misses; it’ll be sad if it’s as cloying as you portray it.
I was going to see this anyway, but I’m looking forward to it because my daughter (not Asian!), even before puberty, was the sweetest little girl you’d ever know and then on a dime, turn into a grizzly bear and lose her ever loving mind. We joke about it now but at the time, it was like she was possessed by demons from a place far worse than Hell.So yeah, the story doesn’t seem all that outlandish to me. The trailers early on hooked me in, still surprised why Disney is only streaming this.
Based on this…. review? The protagonist sounds very much like my 13 year old daughter. I’m looking forward to seeing it with her tonight. Also, 6ix represent!
Whenever I see a review that tries to tell me that “this is the movie we need right now” I tune the fuck out.
Thank you for giving the Correct Opinion on this movie! That guy at Cinemablend should have known better than to withhold audience pandering!
Why does Pixar always make what’s supposed to be a cute animal so creepy looking and ugly?
The thing about “not fitting in”, even in 2022, is that if you haven’t won a major award of some kind or turned the eyebrows of influential people in some way, the world at large will still treat you like a leper.Be proud of being different? Yes but in the real world, just because you accept who you are, doesn’t mean everyone else will.Animated movies certainly inspire and help boost confidence when they’re young but does nothing to help them when they face the reality of adulthood.
Yeah, and the theme of many movies “just follow your dream” is also not very helpful. Your parents may have known more than you knew when they advised you against trying to be an actor or an artist. Yes, every successful actor and artist has stories about how they persevered despite everyone doubting them, but this ignores the 1000s of people who tried in those careers and failed. And should have taken their parents’ advice and tried to be something practical.
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Holy fuck this movie was bad, and now I have to wonder what is going on with AVC’s movie review standards.
It really wasn’t. What exactly was bad about it? Maybe you’re a WASP and couldn’t identify with it?
Yeah, wasps and red pandas are creatures notorious for not understanding each other’s point of view.
Turning Red/A Bug’s Life crossover!
This movie was terrific. Captured being a girl in middle school perfectly. Also, it was hilarious.
I thought it was… fine. Middle of the pack Pixar.
Counterpoint, I thought it was amazing.
I liked it. You didn’t. It’s not really worth getting bent out of shape about it in either case. I am a bit curious about your reasons for not liking it. One of the least useful bits of critical discourse is when someone says “[X]* sucks!” but then provides no followup that indicates why that feel that way. (The counter opinion “[X] rocks!” without any reasoning is similarly unhelpful…let’s call this the Beavis and Butthead school of critical analysis).*(Yes, I realize that a film called “X” was recently released, so I hope no-one was confused there!)I will say that this film maybe didn’t hit as hard in the feels as some Pixar movies, but I’m not sure that is necessarily a reason to mark it down. Mei’s “besties” were probably not as well-drawn as they could be—each gets allotted a personality trait/quirk for quick character shorthand—so Mei’s betrayal did not quite land as hard as it should have (plus, you know, they were totally exploiting her for $$$$, so…there’s that). And, sure, the story is rooted in the director’s own experiences growing up, but I could see someone making the case that it does promulgate some of the same stereotypes that have been around for ages: more specifically the “model minority” and “Tiger Mom” ones.But, yeah, I enjoyed it. No telling yet whether whether it will linger in my memory or whether it will play as well on rewatch, but I can only judge by my current feelings about it right now.
Better dead than red.
While I’m enjoying the movie, I just do not like Mei’s mother whatsoever. I find her completely unsympathetic and an incredibly toxic person who abuses her daughter.
I’m honestly sick, tired and disturbed over how Disney keeps putting in such toxic relationships in their movies and TV shows (Moana, Proud Family, Big City Greens, Encanto, Coco, this movie) without really going into detail of how abuse destroys someone. Its also kind of fucked up that the examples I listed come from works focusing on PoC.
Yep, just couldn’t relate. How about a movie that speaks to MY experiences, like the time I was a teenage girl who had to run away from my stepmother and ended up living with seven dwarves? Or when I was an orphan on a sand planet and found out I was really a galactic magic warrior? Or a coyote who mail ordered earthquake pills?
Sexually adjacent crush? does that mean person their own age? It sounds superfluous.
I watched it last night with my home-from-college daughter, and as far as I can tell it was about me/us, although neither of us is Chinese or a were-panda. I am, however, a mom of an overachieving kid, and I was shaking with sobs at the end of this movie. Like, my face was in my hands and my shoulders were heaving. My daughter was crying too, saying “It’s OK mom, I understand.” This morning I told my mom about it. She’s retired now, but is considered a legend in her field, so, yeah, you get the picture about how close to home this movie hit. My daughter just left to go back to college (takes deep breath). The movie was also very funny, and featured perhaps my favorite movie dad ever.If you felt that Brave did not work for you because it was too much about mothers and daughters (and bears), then I suppose this movie is not for you either.Oh, I predict Billie Eilish will get an Academy Award for best song.
If you felt that Brave did not work for you because it was too much about mothers and daughters (and bears), then I suppose this movie is not for you either.I never quite get that as a reason. Does empathy count for nothing? A good story finds a way to connect and draw on our shared human experience. It might not hit me as hard as it did with you—cis het white dude here—but it did resonate with me and make me think back on my own teenage years.I’ve never seen Brave. It seems to be largely relegated to the lower tier of Pixar movies, fairly or not. And a lot of people were really lukewarm on the more recent The Good Dinosaur. But I guess when you have as good a track record as Pixar does, that can happen.
I also want to say a few words about the animation style and quality. Setting the human characters aside for a moment, some of the scenes featured the most photo realistic animation I have ever seen. A post credits sequence looked so real I at first thought it was a filmed sequence. The animations of food looked exactly like real food. The boiling water looked like actual boiling water. Many of the shots were packed with detail in both foreground and background. Technically, it was magnificent. I’ll probably re-watch it just to pay closer attention to that (after I rehydrate from crying so much). I also enjoyed the inclusion of certain anime-inspired details. The melding of state of the art digital animation with these classic hand-drawn details gave the movie a unique look. At the same time I fully understand that not everyone pays ridiculously close attention to movies the way I do, although plenty of readers of this site do. Regarding the look of the human characters, I realize that some people do not like the chunky outline. It is more reminiscent of “Lilo and Stitch” than, say, “Frozen”, and the comparisons to the Aardman animation house style are apt. This is a matter of taste, so there is no right or wrong opinion. I happen to like Lilo and Stitch, so it works for me. I also appreciate having female characters that don’t represent some idealized version of the female form. On the other hand, if it’s a “meh, they just look ugly” for you, that’s cool too.
Well said. After watching the movie, the griping about the “poor” animation style before the movie came out feels even more unwarranted. As you said, it’s more of a stylistic preference, but it was all well done and the more cartoonish, anime aspects felt appropriate to the story/character.
There’s a scene where Mei is on the bus and it is raining and we are seeing her from the outside through the window that is just amazing looking. Watching the raindrops streak across the pane. Very great animation.
I also enjoyed the inclusion of certain anime-inspired details. As I was watching it, some animation bits did *feel* a bit anime-inspired, but I couldn’t exactly put a finger on why. I think it was maybe some of the more exaggerated poses or maybe the “close-up with action lines” (to indicate heightened emotional state). I dunno…I’m probably not explaining it well.tl;dr version: Good animation studio continues to do good. News at 11.
I was thinking the round sparkly eyes whenever they saw something they loved.
I wonder if the character design was a deliberate choice to distance themselves from the usual Disney “house style”. The characters in this and Luca definitely have more of an Aardman look than what Pixar has previously done.
Agreed! I really liked that the most beautiful characters were the boy band members.
I’m just happy to see a lot of comments here about the movie being mostly ok and none of the “Disney is conditioning children to have sex and rebel” comments I’ve been seeing from Concerned, White Christian Mothers(TM) on Facebook.
Holy crap. Really?
Yeah this movie almost instantly got pulled into the Q Moms mass hysteria panic.
That was probably one of the most mild teenage rebellions I’ve ever seen in a movie.
That was probably one of the most mild teenage rebellions I’ve ever seen in a movie.Right?!? Any good human story has a degree of universality to it and there were some aspects of Mei’s experience that line up with my memories, even as our cultural experiences couldn’t be further apart, but I was definitely yelling at the screen (to a fictional character that couldn’t hear me) that her mother was being embarrassing and unreasonable, so she should definitely get angry at her mom and rebel in whatever way she could.I did play the good student and son, but I was definitely sneaking out and drinking whatever cheap, shitty beer I could get my hands on with the neighbor kid. Up until I graduated high school, started driving, and got sloppy, I was just really good at not getting caught (my bedroom was on the lower floor, so I would just sneak back through the window after a night of drinking). And yeah, I’m pretty sure my mom believed my friends were a bad influence on me. I was also pretty embarrassed to be seen around my parents throughout my pre-teen/teen years and I was no doubt a real shit about as it.
To be fair, those White Christian Mothers are also complaining about Godlessness and heathenism.
I saw it last night and – considering how spoiled we’ve been since movies came back I’m having a tough time deciding if this is the best film I’ve seen all year. Just fantastic top to bottom.
I liked the themes and found the characters relatable, but still my overall impression was the movie was kinda thin and only OK. On my personal Pixar rankings it was right in line with Luca and Soul, and better than Onward, but still well short of an Inside Out or Up. Actually well short of Coco, for me.So I am beginning to side with the people who think Pixar is kinda in a rut. Still better than the vast majority of animated movies for kids, but somehow less magical/affecting than their best prior work.
eh this just feels like bigmouth, which I hate. i will be passing on this pixar. first time.
This article is an additional good read for those that want more on why this movie is the kind of cultural reset we need: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/turning-red-is-a-reminder-that-cinema-is-an-empathy-machine/