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Turning Red is a Pixar animation about a teenage girl who transforms into a giant red panda when she gets excited. See the reviews and ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 10, 2023. Jillian Chilingerian Offscreen With Jillian. Turning Red is a rollercoaster of a film that takes different turns as the story unfolds leaving ...
Mar 9, 2022 · Written by Shi and Julia Cho, “Turning Red” passes this familiar baton to Mei, unearthing something that is both culturally specific and universal through its Chinese-Canadian protagonist clearly fashioned by the co-scribes with heaps of personal memories and loving insights. It’s certainly a delight to follow Mei once she discovers her ...
Mar 9, 2022 · Here’s what the positive reviews of Turning Red are saying: Associated Press: “The best thing about “Turning Red” is how it broadens the horizons of the 36-year-old animation powerhouse with a refreshing vantage point and some new moves. If some of Pixar’s greatest movies have used high concepts to illustrate existential quandaries ...
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By Siddhant Adlakha
Posted: Mar 7, 2022 2:00 pm
Turning Red will debut on Disney+ and on limited theaters on March 11, 2022.
It’s a shame that Turning Red won’t have a wide theatrical release, given its wealth of laugh- and/or cheer-out-loud moments. While Pixar’s recent output has welcomed adults with open arms — people who likely grew up watching the studio’s original films — their latest feels unapologetically in-tune with younger audiences, both narratively and aesthetically, without compromising the heart and humor that makes these movies shine. Directed by Domee Shi, whose short film Bao preceded Incredibles 2, it’s a mile-a-minute romp set in Toronto in the early aughts, about a young Chinese Canadian teenager whose puberty brings about complications that are equal parts personal, cultural, and magical. They also result in an endearing and enjoyable story about family and friendship, with parables for growing up that are extremely on the nose (as they should be for a kids’ movie), but which arrive in the kind of inspired creative packaging that Pixar has needed for some time.
The year is 2002, and 13-year-old Meilin Lee (Rosalie Chang) has just about managed to find balance between excelling at school, spending time with her close-knit friend group, and helping her protective mother, Ming (Sandra Oh), oversee Toronto’s oldest Chinese temple. Even before we meet our spry young protagonist, her introductory voiceover comes steeped in a spunky attitude — a confidence that is tested when, one morning, she wakes up having transformed into a giant red panda. Feeling like a bloated monster, she tip-toes around Ming and her father, Jin (Orion Lee), drowning in anxious self-consciousness as she tries to navigate her changing body. However, what seems like an obvious menstruation metaphor grows delightfully complicated when Ming turns out to be less-than-surprised by Meilin’s transformations, which appear to be triggered by intense emotions. As it turns out, this particular problem runs in the family.
The stakes of Turning Red are both smaller and more personal than you might expect. Meilin’s predicament no doubt drives the familial conflict, as her mother tries to help her keep it under wraps (and keep her feelings bottled up, lest she Hulk out). However, this tension soon becomes entwined with a story of Meilin and her three best friends trying to see their favorite boy band live in concert, a scenario that both clashes with Meilin’s unpredictable changes, and ties a neat bow on themes that get rightfully messy, between the lofty expectations of an immigrant family, navigating a mother-daughter relationship (at a time when it’s sure to become more fraught), being conditioned to keep your emotions in check as a teenage girl, and growing up alongside pals who are just as confused and hormonal as you are.
Every dramatic transition has its own zippy lighting cue, which makes the film a joke-filled ride, but its visual gags always enhance the tension and emotions rather than undercutting them. A group of Meilin’s aunties, who enter the story at a pivotal time, arrive like Hollywood movie stars drenched in floodlights, while the attractive boy band sensation 4-Town — a reflection of early 2000s pop, but with a Korean member to place them in today’s zeitgeist — are practically angels accompanied by divine sunlight. Even Meilin’s outbursts warp the entire fabric of the film around her, since she begins to see herself as a beastly inconvenience, unworthy of taking up space, until her friends and family convince her otherwise.
Most of all, it’s a movie that’s frank about the most awkward moments of puberty, from embarrassment over burgeoning sexuality, to inexplicable anger, to dealing with bodily insecurity, which it turns into lively and imaginative scenes at every turn. There’s never a dull moment in Turning Red, both because Shi and co-writer Julia Cho lace each beat and interaction with layers of meaning, and because the whole thing comes wrapped in cartoon influences that value expression above realism, which is something modern Hollywood animation occasionally forgets.
A story of magical transformation as a metaphor for personal and cultural change, Turning Red (from Bao director Domee Shi) is Pixar’s funniest and most imaginative film in years. It captures the wild energy of adolescence, uses pop stars as a timeless window into puberty, and tells a tale of friendship and family in the most delightfully kid-frien...
- Siddhant Adlakha
Mar 11, 2022 · Turning Red: Directed by Domee Shi. With Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Ava Morse, Hyein Park. A thirteen-year-old girl named Mei Lee is torn between staying her mother's dutiful daughter and the changes of adolescence.
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Mar 15, 2022 · Right before Turning Red is Monsters Inc. with 96% and on the 13th spot is Soul with 95%. Even the least popular and successful Pixar movies are still considered among the “fresh” percentage, as happens with Brave (78%) and The Good Dinosaur (76%), and the only “rotten” Pixar movie, which as a result sits on the last place, is Cars 2.
