TURNING RED (2022) – Growing pains PIXAR style

Here is Pixar’s latest addition to their ever growing and impressive list of animation classics. This time the protagonist is Meilin (voiced by Rosalie Chiang), a 13 year old Chinese immigrant living in Toronto. As in all Pixar features, our main character comes across with a lot of .. well, character! Meilin is confident, opinionated and quirky. That is, until she somehow finds herself transforming into a big fluffy red panda (voiced by Sandra Oh) whenever she gets excited! How that comes across is best left for you to find out yourself. Too convoluted and hair-brained. The idea of her turning into a big red panda here is a thinly disguised metaphor of Meilin experiencing puberty.

As far as humour goes, Turning Red is spot on with the punch lines perfectly synced with the flawless animation. The animation style this time seem to be deliberately more cartoonish, bordering on the kind of Japanese animation in the good old days of television cartoons. It is also very colourful and like, Luca before it, the backdrop and landscape is added eye candy for the audience. The obsession of Meilin and her bosom best friend in school to the fictitious boys band group 4*Town provided some funny references to the current phenomenon for Korean boy bands. These boys are made to like “pretty” rather than masculine, and their songs and sounds are intentionally made to sound like the boy bands NSYNC and Backstreet Boys. Surprisingly, the songs were written by Billy Eilish and her brother Finneas (who also sang as the one of the 4*Town leads). Suffice to say these songs sounded nothing like the songs Billy Eilish is normally associated with so kudos to her for showing the world another side to her creativity.

If I have to make comparisons with other Pixar movies, I have to admit that Turning Red falls short mainly in its overall storyline. The plot this time is firmly light weight with none of the characters coming across beyond the predictable. Everything about it seems familiar and watching it is like re-watching and re-enjoying a good comedy. I was also feeling a bit uneasy by the massive collateral damage to buildings and infrastructure by the giant pandas without a thought of the safety of the people around them. I know I know, this is an animation and we are not suppose to question about such things but I cannot help finding these “adult” thoughts distracting.

At the end of the day, Turning Red delivers as yet animation that the whole family can enjoy together. It is a pity that it cannot be enjoyed on the big screen with its “larger than life” panda(s). As with the recent Pixar releases, Disney chose to release this exclusively over their streaming service Disney+. The good news is everybody all over the world can get to see this at the same time in the comfort of their homes, making it a global village event.