Movie Breakdown: Turning Red (Noah)
Pre-Screening Stance:
I’m at this point in my life where I know not every Pixar movie is going to be the home run of their glory days, but also that as long as it isn’t even tangentially related to the Cars franchise, it’ll be enjoyable enough. The story of a teenager who turns into a red panda when she hits puberty doesn’t sound great, but hey, I’ll give it a shot.
Post-Screening Stance:
Turning Red – like Luca before it – isn’t a Pixar classic, but it definitely is a pretty bold step forward for a company that has felt fairly static over the last few years. Domee Shi, the director of the adorable, if not strangely cannibalistic Pixar short Bao, takes her first swing at a full length picture, and the injection of her fresh voice gives Turning Red a youthful energy that animated features have been missing as of late. The story of Meilin Lee (Rosalie Chang) and an ancient spell that gives (curses?) her with the ability to turn into a giant, adorable red panda when she’s particularly emotional is one of Pixar’s strangest movies to date. This is, for all accounts and purposes, a film where the main metaphor is a girl getting her period, but instead of having to learn to use tampons, Meilin has to learn to deal with the fact that she now has uncontrollable rage. Shi does a great job of making this a very teenage feeling film. There’s a crackle of almost anime energy in every frame of the movie and it imbues the quartet of teen girls at the heart of it with realistic, well, teenage energy. If there’s a major flaw in the film it’s that Shi has, like so many first time directors, dumped an enormous amount of thematic material into it. The burden of tradition, the disconnect between mother and daughters that accompanies puberty, the want to both be a part of your family’s history and be your own person – Shi tries to hit these theme (and more) while including what amounts to a giant monster fight in downtown Toronto, a quartet of super aunts and, really, so much more. It never dulls the entertainment factor of the flick, but with so many themes to address, it forces the flow into a sort of stuttering pace where problems are introduced and resolved almost episodically. In the end, Turning Red doesn’t hit the marks of a perfect Pixar film, but it definitely carves a new path I’m excited for other films to follow.
One Last Thought:
This film absolutely nails the sweaty, weirdo teenage horniness. Pixar films have been fairly asexual in the past, but Turning Red definitely makes its protagonists all sorts of twitterpated. And it’s both hilarious and awesome.
