By Madison Remrey
Pixar’s latest film, directed by Domee Shi, captures everything it means to be a pre-teen girl – periods, boy crushes, awkward friend groups and overbearing mothers.
Released on March 11, “Turning Red” is set in 2002 and follows the life of Meilin “Mei” Lee, a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl who is living her best life as a straight-A, people pleasing, over achieving pre-teen. She spends her days going to school and helping out her mother and father with their family-owned temple in Toronto.
Things become complicated for Mei when she begins to experience the oh-so-wondrous changes of puberty. Symbolic of beginning her period, Mei wakes up one morning as a red panda. This puts her under a lot of stress as she shifts back and forth seemingly at random.
Mei soon learns that she turns into a red panda anytime that her emotions get the best of her, and one could see why that might be difficult for a pre-teen to control. Mei is distraught at the thought of living the rest of her life like this until her mother reveals that this transformation is something that happens to all the women in their family and there is a “cure” for it.
Since the cure for turning into a panda can only happen during a red moon, Mei must wait an entire month before she is able to fix this side of her that she hates.
The weeks following Mei’s first transformation are filled with questionable decisions—- sneaking out, lying to parents, exploiting her panda’s cuteness for money and more.
This is what being a soon-to-be-teenager is all about, though. Being young means having much to learn about life and doing such isn’t always done in the most logical (or safe) way.
Although Mei’s decisions aren’t made with the most clear of thinking, they are what ultimately teach her important lessons that she may not have learned otherwise. She learns how to love herself for every panda fur on her head and every quirky trait in her bones. Mei learns to be unashamedly herself.
Nothing short of any previous Pixar film, the details in “Turning Red” are astonishing.
Mei’s friends aren’t just some random characters thrown together, they’re people you would actually expect to find in a 13-year-old friend group. There’s the awkward tomboy, Miriam; the monotone friend, Priya; and the fiery friend, Abby.
From the clothes and hairstyle of Mei’s family to how the fur of her red panda stands when she’s angry and is flattened when she’s calm, Shi finds subtle ways to express the personality and feelings of each character.
Overall, “Turning Red” is a painfully relatable, yet cute, coming-of-age story. Shi does an amazing job at capturing what it is like during that awkward transition from child to teenager while exploring topics that are not only ignored in children’s media, but also ignored in all other aspects of life—- i.e. periods.
Given the opportunity, it would be well worth any person’s time to sit down and watch this film. It truly is a masterpiece of art and, dare I say, is one of Pixar’s best produced films ever.
