Meilin (Rosalie Chiang) is a preteen girl like any other growing up in the early 2000s in Toronto.  She hangs out at school with her friends, goes home to assist with the family chores, and still finds time to fawn over the boy band, 4*Town.  Everything is great until one morning when Meilin wakes up in a panic because she has turned into a giant red panda.  The only way to regain her human shape, permanently, is to participate in an ancient full moon ritual; the only problem is the next full moon is the same night as a 4*Town concert. 

Turning Red is the latest Pixar film regulated to Disney+ written and directed by Domee Shi with additional story credits going to Julia Cho and Sarah Streicher.  It is a coming-of-age story and another strong argument that some of the most creative work coming out of the House of Mouse is from the Pixar arm.  The story is incredibly relatable as it runs the gamut of all the struggles a preteen faces; how to show loyalty to family and friends all while trying to become their own person.  It is a scary time in all of our lives, but Shi and her team weave a truly tender story that faces these challenges head-on as they introduce their target audience to some of the struggles they may soon be facing at school and at home while giving the adults in the crowd a knowing and reassuring wink. 

As of late, Pixar has been taking a step back from their photorealistic approach and embracing the freedom a more stylized and cartoon style can afford the story.  The team now has more than just color pallets to couple with a story, but can begin to play more with shapes and character design that can also help to create an atmosphere and tone.  Obviously, here, the big playground is the design around the red panda that Meilin transforms into whenever her emotions run high, but even in the human forms each character has a design that helps accent and accentuate their unique personalities. 

The supporting cast of Turning Red is not only large but incredibly endearing.  On one end of the spectrum is Meilin’s family: her overprotective mother Ming (Sandra Oh) and bumbling – but not in a butt-of-the-joke way – father Jin (Orion Lee), and stern Grandma Wu (Wai Ching Ho).  At school, Meilin spends her days with her crew of oddballs the tomboy Miriam (Ava Morse), apathetic Pryia (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), and the chaos agent Abby (Hyein Park).  The crew is constantly bothered by Tyler (Tristan Allerick Chen), a snooty jock who acts as an interesting antagonist in the story, though the real arc is one that is about growing up more so than any recess yard antics. This era of “life is hard” features from Pixar continues and Turning Red proves once again that these kinds of stories can be just as fantastic and thrilling as one with an evil queen, or dragons and monsters. 

Turning Red does fall apart a little when the red panda metaphor is put to any kind of test.  The script uses it as a bit of a catch-all so it is used to explain the themes of finding one’s individuality, and is also used to represent your emotions. As a symbol of individuality, the film teaches that it should be hidden away, driven home when the grandmother and the aunties all banish their panadas in a second ritual. As a symbol of one’s emotions, it teaches that they are best bottled up. While an ancillary reading could be made that it is advising not to act on emotions like rage or anger, Meilin transforms when she is happy and excited, too, and the arc of the film asks her to hide all emotions, an incredibly damaging and unhealthy message to send to people of all ages.  Further, in the end – and during the middle act for that matter – Meilin is commodifying this part of herself which, while the younger audience may not see the troubling ramifications that approach implies, it is not lost on older audiences. Possibly, the script is trying to use it as a platform to allow people to highlight their talents, but the way the story shakes out is that it comes off more exploitative than celebratory. 

With bright colors, emotive anime-inspired faces, and catchy songs written by sibling duo Billie Eilish and Finneas, Turning Red highlights all the strengths that animation can bring to cinema. Pixar is no stranger to exploring greater themes in their work than just finding true love’s first kiss, and Shi’s very personal labor of love is no different. The film feels so fresh, new, and exciting on many levels, most of which come from centering the film on Meilin. Not since Brave (2012) has Pixar had a human, female protagonist take the center stage, and even then, it was wrapped up in medieval fantasy and presented as a fairy tale. Turning Red tackles the difficulty of growing up in the modern world, and by smartly setting it at the turn of the century, it appeals to a broad audience of first children of parents who themselves were coming of age at the same time as the film.