Turn­ing Red

Turn­ing into ani­mals or oth­er myth­ic crea­tures is prac­ti­cal­ly a Dis­ney cliché at this point. Yet Domee Shi’s Turn­ing Red puts an engag­ing spin on the con­ceit, employ­ing it as a mul­ti­fac­eted metaphor for a num­ber of ado­les­cent grow­ing pains, as well mak­ing ties to var­i­ous aspects of cul­tur­al identity.

A self-pro­claimed ​‘adult’ of 13, Mei Lee is reach­ing a cross­roads in her life. What she wants is begin­ning to clash with what her par­ents want for her. As in Shi’s excel­lent short film Bao – a silent sto­ry about a par­ent suf­fer­ing from an emp­ty nest – Turn­ing Red depicts the tra­di­tions and tex­tures of the fam­i­ly home as they are del­i­cate­ly unpacked via the adorable sym­bol­ism of Mei’s stress-induced trans­for­ma­tion into a giant red panda.

The red pan­da comes to rep­re­sent puber­ty and social anx­i­ety, a parent’s fear of sep­a­ra­tion that comes with their children’s mat­u­ra­tion, even gen­er­a­tion-span­ning matri­lin­eal anx­i­eties about being a per­fect daugh­ter. Even after three decades of Pixar pro­duc­tions, Turn­ing Red’s per­spec­tive feels unique, con­cerned as it is with the awk­ward real­i­ties of girl­hood, child­ish crush­es and awk­ward sex­u­al awak­en­ings, all with­out open­ly manip­u­lat­ing the view­er into cry­ing, as Pixar films are oft to do.

This kind of use of fan­ta­sy-as-alle­go­ry for parental anx­i­eties and fam­i­ly his­to­ry might recall Mamoru Hoso­da for some, a film­mak­er Shi is on record as being a big fan of, even quot­ing his 2018 film Mirai in one inter­ac­tion between par­ent and child, as well as Mei leap­ing through the air in the exact pose of 2006’s The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

Oth­er such influ­ences are woven into the visu­al tex­ture of Turn­ing Red as well as its nar­ra­tive, as Shi accents sequences with the sparkling eyes, 2D impact frames and speed lines seen in so many an after­school ani­mé. There are oth­er effects that recall the CG and hand-drawn hybrids of Spi­der-Man: Into the Spi­der-Verse and the Net­flix series Arcane. That mix­ture of visu­al ref­er­ence makes Turn­ing Red imme­di­ate­ly stand out as one of Pixar’s more vibrant works, part of a wel­come shift toward a more expres­sive­ly car­toon­ish style com­pared to the drab pseu­do-real­ism of some­thing like Soul.

It bounces through a can­dy-coloured Toron­to as seen through the eyes of ​“mild­ly annoy­ing” (accord­ing to a teacher) 13-year-old over­achiev­er, Mei. At the same time Lud­wig Görransson’s score mix­es catchy R&B grooves with tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese instru­ments, reflect­ing the push-and-pull between the Mei’s fam­i­ly clash­ing desires. Which is most­ly the N‑Sync adja­cent fic­tion­al boy band 4‑Town (their incred­i­bly catchy songs writ­ten by Bil­lie Eil­ish and pro­duced by Gör­rans­son), which is a delight­ful high­light of the film’s extreme­ly 2002 setting.

After its hyper­ac­tive intro­duc­tion, Shi and co-writer Julia Cho’s sto­ry set­tles into an incred­i­ble com­ic rhythm, char­ac­terised by won­der­ful­ly sharp sto­ry­board­ing and quick­fire edit­ing: an ear­ly stand­out sequence sees Mei pro­fuse­ly sweat­ing as she draws increas­ing­ly deranged doo­dles of a local gro­cery store clerk as an attrac­tive hunk (and mermaid).

It’s hilar­i­ous through­out, as the prob­lems that Mei would be hav­ing any­way are ampli­fied by her trans­for­ma­tion, and Ros­alie Chi­ang cap­tures the nuances of those prob­lems in her live­ly and relat­able vocal per­for­mance. The cast is across-the-board superb too, and as Mei’s moth­er Ming, San­dra Oh con­tin­ues to prove her voice act­ing chops, bring­ing out­ra­geous humour and human­i­ty to a char­ac­ter that could eas­i­ly veer into reduc­tive cliché.

But it’s also impor­tant to high­light that Turn­ing Red keeps its stakes con­tained sim­ply to Mei’s bur­geon­ing inde­pen­dence. Even as it quite lit­er­al­ly scales up the fam­i­ly dra­ma to hilar­i­ous extremes – think Aki­ra with fuzzy crea­tures in Toron­to – it remains root­ed in the mun­dane trou­bles of teenage girls. With all of its visu­al delights and expert use of its colour­ful onscreen spaces, its ever-a-shame that it’s the lat­est Pixar movie exiled to Disney’s stream­ing ser­vices – because it’s one of their best ani­mat­ed movies in years.