TURNING RED

As was prophesied at the very end of 2015’s Inside Out, Pixar has ventured into the wilds of puberty. This makes a certain timeline sense, as many of the kids weaned on early wonderments from the studio—like Toy Story, which was released nearly 27 years ago—are now adults with kids of their own and might be worried about how to handle that most harrowing of youthful transitions, this time from the grownup side of things.

To allay some of that parental anxiety, or at least package it in something familiar, the new film Turning Red—written by Domee Shi and Julia Cho, and directed by Shi—situates itself in cozy nostalgia. The film takes place in Toronto in 2002, at a time when the world was mad for boy bands and Tamagotchis, while cellphones and the Internet crept closer (ominously or not) toward world-domination. The children of today may not connect with much out of the film’s recent-period trappings. But the adults will, and they must be considered too.

That is the main thematic thrust of Turning Red: the vexing disconnect, and necessary compromises, between adolescent and parent, teens running headlong into the world while their folks at home grasp for them and try to yank them back. No matter how strict or hovering the parent, the forces of time cannot be stopped. The hormones, the moody willfulness, the casual forsaking of home for the possibilities beyond will come to bear eventually—parents, really, can only ready themselves for that inevitability.

The body stuff of puberty is most obviously made metaphor in the film. Newly 13, middle-schooler Mei (Rosalie Chiang) is having some epiphanies. It’s not just the faraway idols of her favorite boy band, 4*Town, whom she’s gaga over; there are boys right there in her actual life who, quite suddenly, seem awfully interesting, too. Mei’s passions are running high—for music, for friends, for guys with cute hair—when she awakes one morning in the form of a giant red panda. Real puberty is, of course, a bit more gradual than that. But at the time, it can feel just as total and out-of-nowhere as Mei’s overnight metamorphosis. What has she become? And is it something to be ashamed of?

That is plenty enough for one movie to grapple with. But Turning Red layers the riot of Mei’s physical being with a tricky, and familiar, emotional tension. As is the wont of teenagers, Mei is having some trouble with her mom, Ming (Sandra Oh), a traditionalist who expects academic rigor and family obligation to take precedence over all else in her daughter’s life. The women in Ming’s family find themselves, around the time of puberty, turning into red pandas when they get a bit too excited. But that can be controlled, even eradicated, by some sort of spell done under a red moon. Mei will have her wildness tempered, just as her mother did—and perhaps as all young women are told they should before things get out of hand and a reputation, or worse, is ruined.

Turning Red eschews the wistful murmur of many past Pixar films in favor of antic energy. It’s a loud film, maybe to best reflect the noisy fireworks of the teenage mind. One longs for a lighter touch here and there, though. The film manages a handful of poignant scenes, but then too quickly, too eagerly goes bouncing off before the moment has really sunk in. I suppose that hastiness is another analogy for the mercurial flash of a young person scrambling into self-realization. But even the most amped-up of kids slows down once in a while.

Beyond making a pandering appeal to the Millennials in the audience, it’s not clear why the film is set 20 years ago. With that choice, the filmmakers conveniently sidestep having any dialogue about the specific pitfalls of contemporary teenage life. Maybe they trusted that Turning Red’s messages are universal enough that a tackling of TikTok was unnecessary. I hope kids do feel spoken to by the film, but the closeness of its time period— and yet, what a distance—could, oddly, prove more alienating than a movie set hundreds of years ago.

Though, I suspect tweens and teens are not the real targets anyway. The film often seems squarely, deliberately, aimed at their parents instead, offering them a gentle (if busy) reminder that they were young once too, once bursting at the seams with enthusiasm and curiosity.

Guide your children as well as you can, Turning Red advises. But also take care, and pains, to recognize that they are emergent people unto themselves, entitled to make mistakes of their own, to pursue their nascent desires and interests, to leave some things— many things, even—secret and hidden from your field of vision. That’s a worthy sentiment, no matter the decade. And anyway, what’s old is new again, as ever: Mei may have her 4*Town, but millions of kids now have BTS. So, maybe let them go to the concert and scream their heart out. And then, perhaps, have the particularly uncomfortable talk that Pixar, for all its clever allegory, is never going to have for you.

Now streaming on Disney+ Rating 8/10