Turning Red Review

March 7, 2022 at 5:25pm
By Jason Stettner

This is an animated Pixar film that follows a young girl as she continues her life as a thirteen year old. She’s proud of growing up and balancing friends with family. There’s of course a sudden shift and randomly when she begins to have strong emotions the red panda inside comes out to play. The story follows Meilin (Rosalie Chiang) as she deals with a historic family element where they have a large panda within.

This manifests as a rather large red panda and it’s actually rather entertaining. Along the way of dealing with this situation she also is handling some aspects of aging. A growing interest in the boys around her, anger with others causing problems and a desire to balance traditional family life with the friends she has.

There’s a close group of pals she hangs out with and ultimately they want to see the big boy band that’s coming into town. It’s quite interesting how certain aspects are leveraged towards this goal and as expected some rather hilarious moments come into play.

There are certainly some deeper aspects to this narrative as the themes do suggest some more important elements for younger women and I think that’s handled quite well. To some it’s just a funny and generally cuddly large red panda that has hilarious moments, to others it will be a look at one’s duty to family alongside a duty to themselves as they continue to age.

The film is set within Toronto Canada, it’s quite nice to have a more local offering for a location. It digs deep into the diversity of the area, with a lot of representation being present within the foreground and the background. There is also a billboard about indigenous month in there for a brief moment.

Being a Pixar film the animation quality is simply splendid, with tons of detail being painted in every scene. It has a very distinct color palette that helps main characters stand out and a great flow throughout the film. The voice acting was excellent, I wanted to highlight the minimal in bits but very hilarious Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan).

I should also give a good mention to the role of the mother, Ming (Sandra Oh) who brought a great level of embarrassment alongside a general love and care for her daughter. Along with this being set in Canada, this is also a bit of a time piece being presented as the early 2000’s. If you grew up in the country around that time you will definitely notice a number of brand and item references which in itself was rather humorous to me.

The Conclusion

Turning Red is an impactful film featuring lovely animation that dives into the values of growth in age and balancing a duty to one’s family with a duty to one’s self. It really was well done and a thoroughly enjoyable viewing. It has many moments of hilarity, with an ever mounting selection of quirky spots and well placed embarrassment.

It’s also rather nice that Toronto now has its own massive sort of creature, that was grand. Anyways, the animation delivers as does the story telling within this effort. They balance something that a younger individual would fine fun and at the same time an older person would find rather entertaining yet impactful in the narrative being told. Definitely a worthwhile time, filled with references of the era and the odd musical beat here or there too.

Turning Red Review at Home with Streamed Viewing
Screening was Provided by Disney

Rating Overall: 8.0