‘Turning Red’ surprised me with its storyline and I’m happy to say that happened.
On the surface, it’s just a coming-of-age story for a young teen in early 2000s Toronto, Canada.
And honestly, it shouldn’t be so relatable or remind me of incidents in my teen years either!
Overall, I think that’s probably the best part, and have spent several text conversations with old friends making parallels between our lives.
I think it also lays the groundwork for promoting healthier family relationships – especially between mothers and daughters.
There’s also a strong anti-bullying thread that runs throughout and I’m all for it!
Turning Red is an animated fantasy comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
It was directed by Domee Shi, in her feature directorial debut, and written by Shi and Julia Cho.
The film is rated PG for thematic material, suggestive content, and language and is 100 minutes long.
It stars the voices of Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Ava Morse, Hyein Park, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Orion Lee, Wai Ching Ho, Tristan Allerick Chen, and James Hong.
It is Pixar’s 25th feature film.
In 2002, Meilin “Mei” Lee (Chiang) is a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl living in Toronto.
Mei helps take care of the family’s temple dedicated to their ancestor, Sun Yee, and works to make her strict, overprotective mother Ming (Oh) proud.
Mei hides her personal interests from Ming, such as the fact that she and her best friends Miriam (Morse), Priya (Ramakrishnan), and Abby (Park) are fans of the boy band 4*Town.
Ming discovers Mei’s crush on the local convenience store clerk and unintentionally embarrasses Mei in public, including in front of school bully Tyler (Chen), which leads Mei to have a vivid nightmare involving red pandas.
The next morning, Mei wakes up to find herself transformed into a large red panda.
After hiding from her parents, Mei discovers that she only transforms when she is in a state of high emotion, though her hair remains red after changing back.
Ming initially believes Mei is experiencing her first period, but finds out the truth when she further embarrasses Mei at school, causing Mei to transform and run back home.
Ming and Mei’s father Jin (Lee) explains that Sun Yee was granted this transformation to protect her daughters, and every female family member since then has also transformed when they came of age.
This has become inconvenient and dangerous, so the red panda spirit must be sealed in a talisman by a ritual on the night of the Red Moon, the next occurring in a month’s time.
Mei’s friends inadvertently discover her transformation but take a liking to it, and Mei finds that concentrating on them helps control the red panda within her.
Ming allows Mei to resume her normal life, but refuses to let Mei attend 4*Town’s upcoming concert.
The girls secretly begin to raise money for the tickets at school, exploiting the popularity of Mei’s red panda form.
And like with any attempt at “secrecy” from one’s parents it’ll all come crashing down.
But, that also leads to several revelations and finally opens communications between Mei and her parents fully.
Sadly, you can only catch the film streaming on Disney+ or wait until it’s out on DVD/BluRay release.
