It's funny, I can't really make up my mind about Pixar's latest film Turning Red. My ambivalence started even before it aired. Some odd decisions were made about its release which made me feel a mixture of pity for the Pixar people (for being shackled to Disney, who do not always seem to have the studio's best interest at heart) and irritation. The trailers, unlike the ones for Onward and Soul, were pretty good: I liked the protagonist Meilin's spunk, and the red panda she intermittently turns into is cute. At the same time, as someone who usually enjoys Disney Animation films more than Pixar ones, I have a latent resentment towards Pixar, as the studio that know-it-all animation experts often compare favourably to Disney's own more "sentimental" fare. I go into a Disney film wanting to enjoy it. I go into a Pixar film expecting to enjoy it, but if I don't, I'm not altogether sorry. What really puts me off is any hint of smugness or moral superiority – and the vibes I was getting from the latest Pixar project weren't quite exempt from that.
All the same, the film apparently tackled female puberty and its problems, and unlike many male YouTube reviewers I have first-hand experiences of this (albeit from the distant past). Surely, I thought, I would find the film more relatable than some of them did. When I sat down to watch it – in something of a hurry, as I had to finish it and my washing in time for the Swedish final heat for Eurovision the same evening – I was optimistic.
I mention my hurry, because I think I would have appreciated Turning Red more if it had been the evening's main event, which I could then have enjoyed while relaxing with a glass of wine. As it was, the sometimes hectic and jumbled feel of the film was heightened by the circumstances. I still liked it. The animation's gorgeous, the setting (Toronto in the early 2000s, with Meilin being part of a well-established Asian minority) felt different and exciting and the characters are likeable. I laughed a couple of times and cried once. Still, it didn't strike as much of a chord with me as I expected.
To briefly sum up the main story: Meilin Lee, a confident, high-achieving thirteen-year-old, is happy with her life, although her wish to please her loving but overprotective mother Ming is starting to collide with her teenage interests such as hanging out with her friends and fangirling over a boy band. Then, the night after a particularly intense experience, Meilin suddenly turns into a giant red panda. She finds out that she can keep the panda in by controlling her feelings, but when her mother finds out what's going on, she's not surprised. Turning into a red panda when in an emotional state has been a feature for the women in the family for generations, but there is a ritual which can fix the problem. Until it can be performed, Meilin has to juggle her panda-ness and a plan to attend a concert with her friends featuring their beloved boy band 4 Town without their parents' knowledge (especially not Meilin's mother's).
Part of Turning Red really is relatable and/or believable. Early teenage life is in many ways captured well – the strong bond of friendship between Meilin and the girls she hangs out with (Miriam, Priya and Abby); their crushes on the 4 Town members which don't preclude an interest in boys closer to home; the way life can seem to conspire to embarrass you and the all-importance of certain events. But then there are some scenes that just felt overdone, and they mostly concern Ming. I have a hard time imagining a mother who, when discovering the romantic fantasy drawings her thirteen-year-old daughter has made of herself and a boy, leaps to the conclusion that something really has happened between them and races off to confront the oblivious youngster with her miserable daughter in tow. There's being overprotective, and then there's being plain daft. The way Ming embarrasses Meilin later in the story (while still under the impression that her daughter is suffering from her first periods, not red panda fits) also beggars belief, but I can just about buy it as an attempt to be discreet which goes completely awry. All the same, I think the film could have cut both these scenes and not lost out on much – the strains in the relationship between Meilin and Ming are already established elsewhere.
The red panda transformation, obviously, is a metaphor for puberty, and a somewhat too heavy-handed one. Many family films (and plenty of children's classics) work on two levels. There's the surface level of imaginative adventures, then there's a deeper level of questions raised which adults (and precocious children) can ponder if they want to. The problem with Turning Red is that the surface level doesn't quite work. The red panda shenanigans, though they are given an explanation in family lore, have difficulty standing on their own two feet. It's hard to disregard the link with female puberty and just see it as a fun girl-transforms-into-animal flick if one would choose to do so. I wouldn't be surprised if children who haven't hit puberty yet and see this film are left bemused about what's really going on, and I can't really blame those male YouTubers if they couldn't properly get into it.
That red panda is really cute, though.
