Turning Red features a predominantly East Asian cast and is about the growing pains that come for a young adolescent and her mother - oh, mothers and daughters, the things that come between them are about as (in this case) building busting as the love that invariably keeps them together - but it's an absolutely universal story. So many young people come to find that their parents, one and/or both depending on the time, become way too much to deal with, and that finding attraction in others is something immediate and pleasurable and also forms friendships (like 4-Town... ugh and they're 5 teens what gives). So many don't know what to do with their bodies as they sprout hair all over and hormones rage like a furnace. Is it possible to find your "center" when you're 13?
Turning Red is no different than, say, the 400 Blows in addressing how a young person finds themselves at a crossroads of life and choosing a way to go is a conundrum on top of a pain-pile some days, this despite/because of the joys that come with being young and (sometimes/discovering one likes to be) carefree and DGAF about stuff like school and routines and rituals. That these two films are from very different countries and times and protagonists isn't the point, rather that Domee Shii, like Truffaut or Greta Gerwig or Reiner/King with a Stand by Me or (insert other Coming of Age serio-comic saga), finds through her art some compelling ways to express how these changes are vast and cruel and bewildering.
In this case, Mei doesn't know what to quite do with her Panda-y self, or more significantly with what her mother wants her to do with it. It's a film ultimately about familial vs self expectations, and it's realized and executed with a heck of a lot of heart, wit, intense cuteness (that box of kittens made me laugh hard), and enough pathos to crash through a dozen concerts. I do have a few nitpicks on my first viewing, some maybe a little minor that I know come with suspending a bit of disbelief (there was never any time the parents thought to mention the whole Panda-transformation curse thing), and some maybe not as much (not to give too many spoilers away, but would 4-Town or their legions of fans react like *that* after what happens in the climax of the movie? I don't know if I fully buy it, even if it still makes for a heart-pulling finale). And on a more fundamental level, you can kind of see what's going to happen with the Mom pretty early on.
But these little points don't take away from this being another triumph for Pixar - I almost want to say yawn another but these things are so much harder to pull together and click all into place than most realize - and Shii fulfilling her promise after the dynamic High-Cute Big-Cry energy from Bao (which if you watch again, as I did, is thematically so similar to Red). I love the characters, the vision of Toronto, and so much to do with how we all as younger people struggled through the UGH and AAGH of so much, and it's a movie that manages to remind the adults how profound it can be to confront that and reflect on it all. If it falls short of All Time Masterpiece that may be more on me than it will be for you.
