Random Movie Review - Turning Red

 

One of the great things I like about Pixar is how with every film, they are trying to push harder with what is possible with full CGI films. A Bug's Life was an attempt to see how many characters can appear in one scene, Monster's Inc explored fur physics, Finding Nemo explored water physics and Cars experimented with landscapes, just to name a few. More recently, Pixar films have been based or inspired by the real life experiences of the company's staff and Turning Red is the latest film to do this (being inspired by director Domee Shi's experiences of growing up) though with a twist thrown into the mix to make things interesting. Well it looks like fun and borrows trends from various forms of anime (not to mention red pandas), so lets a take a look:

The year is 2002 (I would have been 12 at some point in that year) and we are in Toronto where 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl Meilin Lee (who friends and family call Mei Mei and is voiced by Rosalie Chiang) is a girl that enjoys life at school with her friends, but secretly hides her personal interests from her strict mother Ming (voiced by Sandra Oh) with whom, she helps take care of the family temple that is dedicated to Sun Yee, their ancestor. With lots of ambitions, Mei is enjoying life. That is, until following a bad experience with her mum, she has vivid nightmares about red pandas. So much so that she ends up turning into one as the result of experiencing a state of high emotion. Her parents eventually find this out and realize she is the latest female in the family to be able to turn into a red panda and as such, begin preparations to perform the ritual that helped take Ming's red panda out of her and into a gem she carries. But Mei sure enough has second thoughts about it later down the line.

While nowhere near one of Pixar's greatest of films, it is clear quite early on that this was inspired by anime due to its animation style and visual looks. It also takes inspiration from Chinese culture too and even though I like many of you would have preferred to see it at the cinema, having it on Disney+ may actually be OK. It's a funny film with memorable characters, great music and a very bizarre climax that would actually in my opinion make this film a good fit for a future Kingdom Hearts game in terms of how it's all about family and growing up. Yeah, worth watching if you have time for it. 8/10