turning red movie review controversy

• Newsletters

Site search

• Israel-Hamas war
• 2024 election
• Solar eclipse
• Supreme Court
• All explainers
• Future Perfect

Filed under:

Pixar’s Turning Red is an unlikely culture war battleground

Turning Red’s biggest offense may just be its unapologetic weirdness.

Share this story

• Share this on Facebook
• Share this on Twitter
• Share this on Reddit
• Share All sharing options

Share All sharing options for: Pixar’s Turning Red is an unlikely culture war battleground

What makes a controversy? In the case of Turning Red , Pixar’s delightful new film about a Toronto teenager who discovers she can turn into a (huge) red panda, it seems no one can make up their minds. But the quest to pick an objection, any objection, to this quirky little movie might have conscripted Turning Red into larger ongoing conversations about parents, kids, and — deep sigh — the culture war.

The vast majority of the film’s audience seems to adore its main character, a 13-year-old Chinese Canadian girl named Mei, with her proud fannish hobbies and her loyal geek squad friends. And they’ve been loudly celebrating Turning Red ’s unique elements: Its early-2000s Toronto setting, its celebration of teenage girlhood, and especially its thoughtful depiction of a child grappling with complicated issues of family, community, and repressed history.

But the buzz around the movie in the days since its March 11 release has been tinged with drama, and might well give you the impression that Turning Red is Pixar’s most controversial film since — maybe ever. While that’s probably not true, the dust-ups around Turning Red keep gaining attention and going viral — maybe less because lots of people are mad than because the things a few people are mad about are just ... kind of weird.

The controversies, such as they are, range from claims that this film isn’t relatable to insistent discomfort with the depiction of a young woman in puberty, a child having autonomy, and the very reality of — yes, sometimes cringeworthy — 13-year-old girls.

In many ways, Turning Red will be a deeply familiar story to many members of its audience. Its Toronto setting is full of local color and details to delight the natives. Mei is a boy-crazy fangirl who’s confident, passionate, and loves school. Those descriptors could easily fit millions of teen girls and adult women, but it’s rare, outside of Bob’s Burgers ’ Tina Belcher, to see this kind of femininity lovingly, playfully depicted on screen. Mei’s favorite band, 4*Town, is a hilarious amalgamation of every early 2000s boy band, sporting all the nasally vocals, heavy synth, and drum pads you could want from a nostalgic trip down the backstreet. The film also sports cheeky period references, from Tamagotchi to Sailor Moon . Even more familiar to many more viewers might well be the film’s loving but strict parents, as well as the rich Chinese cultural signifiers on display, which have drawn praise from viewers:

I've seen Turning Red in a theater and now that I have, I'm really upset that most people aren't going to experience it like this. I don't think I've ever felt more seen by a film like this as an Asian Canadian in the Toronto area. Fantastic stuff. — Jaime Rebanal Does Not Have Elden Ring (@firewalkwjaime) March 9, 2022

The film centers around a careful metaphor that, like the movie’s other elements, is both specific and broad. In Mei’s household, her mother gives her freedom but keeps a close eye on her and expects her to help work in their family temple, which honors their ancestral love of the red panda. All is well until the onset of Mei’s puberty triggers a metamorphosis: Mei begins turning into an oversized red panda when she experiences intense emotions, and learns that this secret has, er, challenged the family for generations. The “cure,” so her mother describes it, is a ceremonial ritual that locks away all the inconvenient emotions associated with the panda transformation: aggression, anger, and fear, but also intense passion and happiness.

Many people are reading Turning Red as a narrative about intergenerational trauma . This can manifest as learned behaviors in response to oppression, abuse, or other challenges that are then passed down through the family or community — like Mei’s family inheritance — until they become embedded and difficult to interrogate. It’s also easy to see this narrative as a commentary on the way Asian diaspora children deal with the tremendous expectations they face to succeed — even in societies where they face discrimination and alienation, often silently .

Yet a metaphor like this one is also durable and applicable to all kinds of different experiences. From one angle, we do have a very individual story: a girl with a red panda spirit that her family’s ancestral temple has carefully locked away through a ritual involving a Chinese shaman and a blood moon. But from another angle, we have a deeply familiar story: a family forcing a child to completely repress a messy, unpalatable side of themselves that they were born with and don’t want to completely get rid of, even if they’re still learning how to navigate the world with it. That is an entirely recognizable story to millions of people. Just as Mei tells the audience: “We’ve all got a messy, loud, weird part of ourselves hidden away, and a lot of us never let it out.”

Whether Turning Red is relatable shouldn’t be a question. Except that the larger cultural debate around Turning Red was prescribed for us, completely predictably, by a single loud critical voice proclaiming that it isn’t.

The culprit: a review, since fully retracted but still archived , written by Sean O’Connell, the managing director of CinemaBlend. O’Connell felt that not only were Turning Red ’s Toronto teens impossible for him to relate to, but that even trying “wore [him] out.” Pixar’s turn toward “deeply personal — though less universal — stories,” he feared, “risk[s] alienating audience members who can’t find a way into the story, beyond admiring the impressive animation.” O’Connell described the film’s target audience as “small and incredibly specific” and snarked that it hadn’t “bothered to include plot elements everyone could find engaging.” He also repeatedly dismissed Turning Red ’s quirky plot as a giant Teen Wolf rip-off, which kind of implies O’Connell has only ever seen one teenage werewolf movie. In reality, director Domee Shi took much of her inspiration from classic ’90s anime .

The public backlash to O’Connell’s review was swift, and so fierce that O’Connell apologized and the website retracted the review and published a better one, with reviewer Sarah El-Mahmoud writing that Turning Red is “the most relatable Pixar film I’ve ever seen.” But despite El-Mahmoud’s opinion aligning with the overwhelmingly positive critical reception of the film, O’Connell’s review got all the attention. It made the question of whether Turning Red was too “specific” a central part of the public discussion.

Other complaints followed. Some viewers and critics have complained about the film’s supposedly inappropriate “maturity,” Mei’s willful nature, and the generalized problem of teen girls.

Actually haven't heard of the movie but after seeing this tweet this morning I just came across this on FB. It's got some people nice and mad! lol pic.twitter.com/nyjZdsEEUG — I'm a Unicorn (@woopdedoo652) March 13, 2022

First, the “mature issues” argument — namely teen girls getting their periods. Turning Red is an obvious analogue for menstruation, and Mei’s mother mortifies her by presenting her with pads in public. But apart from this moment of public embarrassment, there’s little shame or confusion attached to the idea of getting periods, which is a giant win by itself — unless you’re the type of viewer who thinks, as Rotten Tomatoes audience reviewer “Jon K” did, that Pixar overstepped its bounds in a major way. “Insanely inappropriate,” he wrote. “Please leave the explanation of puberty to us parents and we’ll leave the family entertainment ... to you.” Jeana O was “shocked for the huge emphasis on periods and sexual obsessiveness with boys (not something this audience is even thinking about right now and doesn’t need to be concerned about).”

Other reviewers echoed the sentiment that the film’s themes were inappropriate for children, but brought up a second concern: that it celebrates kids disobeying their parents. “It feels like the film champions kids being rude to their parents and other authority figures,” wrote Joseph A, while Cristy A argued that the film’s entire premise was suspect: “This ‘you’re perfect exactly as you are’ theme is not reality, it needs to be pushed back with love, we embrace our good qualities and learn from our bad, embracing anger, rage, disrespect and disobedience is not exactly the messages we want to send our kids.”

This idea — that Turning Red promotes disobedience and an unhealthy level of self-acceptance — has popped up so often in viewer reviews and discussion that it deserves a little unpacking. Pixar, of course, is no stranger to depictions of kids having rocky relationships with their parents, from Brave to Finding Nemo . Disobedient girls are Disney’s bread and butter, from Lilo & Stitch to Encanto to almost every Disney princess. It’s not clear why this particular Disney girl’s disobedience is so objectionable — if we graciously ignore the issue of racism, and the implication that some viewers want Mei to be presented as a respectful, obedient stereotype.

What is clear, however, is that Mei’s family approach to the panda inheritance clearly isn’t healthy for all of them. The conversation about disobedience largely ignores that the thing Mei disobeys is awful : Having her soul essentially ripped apart in a kind of exorcism that doubles as an emotionally scarring, possibly even physically painful intervention — even conversion therapy. If you’re a kid who’s faced with that kind of family pressure to give up a huge part of yourself, it’s arguably okay to feel a lot of negative emotions about it, and to refuse to go through with it. If obedience is going to give you lifelong trauma, sometimes you simply must disobey.

The conversation about disobedience is explicitly tied to Mei having autonomy over her own body, mental health, and spiritual nature, so it’s important to be blunt here: It’s Mei, not her family, not even her parents, who has the right to decide how she handles those things. And at 13, she’s arguably old enough to make such major choices, even if there is, currently, a huge wave of bigoted abuse disguised as legislation across the US arguing otherwise — legislation that attempts to deprive kids of their voice in exactly this kind of situation.

Okay, maybe not exactly this transform-into-a-big-red-panda situation. But Turning Red may be an unintentional litmus test in the larger culture war: How you react to the idea of kids practicing self-acceptance and defining their own identities may say much more about your methods of parenting than about a film whose climax includes a singalong led by an angel-winged boy band.

And that brings us to the final and most ridiculous strand of Turning Red discourse: The argument that the main character is annoying, unrealistic, or “cringe” for reasons I’ve yet to really determine. She’s loud? She likes boys? She’s ... a typical teenage girl? It’s hard to understand what the specific complaints about Mei are, but the typical descriptors from negative audience reviews tend toward “obnoxious,” “silly,” “cringe,” and “unrealistic.”

So many people objected to these kinds of complaints about Mei and her friends that tweets like this one went viral over the weekend.

"turning red is cringe because 13 year old girls dont--" let me stop you right there when i was 13 i wrote a story about how legolas fell in love with me and how i went to middle earth and then aragorn also fell in love with me. we are cringe we are legion — neon any prns! (@neon_heartbeat) March 13, 2022

The hashtag “ #at13 ” also began trending, as people articulated just how over-the-top and embarrassing they were at 13, for anyone out there laboring under the mistaken impression that 13-year-olds are cool.

The idea that Turning Red is “controversial” is hard to stick with. The vast majority of audience members who love the film seem to love it deeply — and I have to admit, as a lifelong embarrassing fangirl, I found it to be completely charming.

In fact, it might be a sign of how special Turning Red is that it’s attracting the kind of criticisms that aren’t really controversies at all, but rather baffled, individualized emotional explosions in response to a film that disobeys the expected rules about what it’s supposed to be.

Mei and her friends are loving, unabashed fans who don’t have to overcome their dorky passions to find self-acceptance and social acceptance. Mei isn’t the “dutiful Asian child” stereotype, nor is her mother the overbearing “tiger mom.” Turning Red gives us a parental figure who doesn’t have an easy route to self-acceptance and doesn’t have all the answers, but who recognizes, in the end, that it’s more important to parent like a team leader than a tyrant.

Perhaps that’s the film’s real offense: It offers lessons for parents, as well as their children. How willing you are to listen might make all the difference in whether it leaves you embracing its idiosyncrasies or ... turning red.

Will you support Vox today?

We believe that everyone deserves to understand the world that they live in. That kind of knowledge helps create better citizens, neighbors, friends, parents, and stewards of this planet. Producing deeply researched, explanatory journalism takes resources. You can support this mission by making a financial gift to Vox today. Will you join us?

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via

Everything you need to know about the 95th Academy Awards

• Why we loved Everything Everywhere All at Once — and why we hope it wins the Oscars
• Top Gun: The long, long, twisty affair between the US military and Hollywood
• Marvel has a whole lot riding on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
• What the film Women Talking loses (and preserves) from the 2018 novel
• Avatar: The Way of Water reminds us that blockbusters don’t have to look absolutely terrible
• Inside Darren Aronofsky’s messy movie The Whale is something wise about religious trauma
• The Whale screenwriter on writing about religious fundamentalism, bodies, and hope
• How Avatar: The Way of Water can make $2 billion and still feel irrelevant
• Wakanda Forever’s touching credits scene, explained
• Tár demands — and deserves — your full attention
• Elvis and the trouble with musician biopics
• Triangle of Sadness might be the meanest film of the year. Its director is an optimist.
• The Banshees of Inisherin is great — and even better if you know the history behind it
• This is the most populist Oscars in a long time
• The surprising lesson from a century of Oscar scandals
• The 25 best movies of 2022
• What Andrea Riseborough’s controversial nomination reveals about the Oscars
• What’s the future of Black horror?
• The Oscars’ new rules for Best Picture nominees, explained
• The Oscars can’t quite decide if they’re about America or the whole world
• This summer’s movies are all about love
• Every movie right now, from Amsterdam to Glass Onion, stars a million A-listers
• The buzziest fall movies have something in common
• Here are 29 new movies to get excited about
• 15 unmissable movies from this year’s Cannes
• From a volcano love story to an all-girl metal band, 15 documentaries you can’t miss
• In 2022, nothing horrified us as much as old age
• One year later, Chris Rock addresses the Will Smith Oscars slap
• Everything Everywhere All at Once, explained by a quantum physicist
• Hollywood’s hot new trend: Parents who say they’re sorry
• How do you make a movie about a monster?
• Fire of Love, about married volcanologists, is this summer’s must-see doc
• Of course Glass Onion is a blast. But it cuts deeper than Knives Out, too.
• Babylon’s debauched old Hollywood is about something much bigger
• 3 things to remember about Avatar before you see Avatar: The Way of Water
• Why Everything Everywhere All at Once won ... everything
• 5 winners and 4 losers from the 2023 Oscars

Sign up for the newsletter Today, Explained

Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day.

Thanks for signing up!

Check your inbox for a welcome email.

Oops. Something went wrong. Please enter a valid email and try again.

What the Controversy Over Turning Red Misses

Some parents are condemning the new Pixar movie for depicting teenage lust. But young viewers deserve more films like it.

One of the funniest moments in Turning Red lasts about a second at most. Mei, the 13-year-old heroine who shape-shifts into a giant red panda whenever her emotions escape her control, has once again morphed into a flustered fuzz ball when— oh no oh no oh no —she spots her crush. She tries to contain herself, of course. She stomps her feet. She holds her breath. But then: “Awooga!” she cries , and for that split second she looks feral—her fangs bared, her eyes bugged out, her tongue lolling out of her mouth. The framing makes the shot even funnier: Mei’s crush, looking bored, is in the foreground, unaware of how wild her reaction is behind his back.

Animated films are made for such exaggerated moments, and Pixar has built a reputation for telling coming-of-age stories in inventive ways. Inside Out explored a preteen’s mood swings by anthropomorphizing her emotions. Finding Nemo grappled with a child’s need for autonomy through the eyes of clown fish. In Turning Red , Mei’s transformations serve as obvious metaphors for puberty—she’s touchy, she’s stinky, she’s got hair everywhere—but though the film has been met with critical acclaim since it landed on Disney+ earlier this month, parents’ reactions have been slightly more mixed. Among the complaints, many of which are too unreasonable to warrant much further analysis, one objection has repeatedly surfaced: that Mei is too “boy crazy.” Sure, Mei is indeed nutty about them; she’s obsessed with a boy band called 4*Town, gyrates to their music, and doodles pictures of her crushes. But her story should be celebrated and watched by parents and children alike, not set aside because Mei is exploring her nascent sexuality.

Read: Hormone monsters

After all, Turning Red is the rare project geared toward younger audiences that authentically captures the intensity of a teenage girl’s first experience with lust. Hollywood has often been prudish about portraying the messy, bewildering, and yes, cringeworthy reality of girlhood for children. Infatuation has made it to the big screen in films such as Eighth Grade and Thirteen , but these movies are rated R, which prevents them from being easily seen by the age group they depict. Pen15 and Big Mouth dive into the overpowering horniness of puberty, but those shows aren’t made with young audiences in mind.

Thirteen-year-old girls are usually seen, in children’s entertainment, dealing with love interests in completely innocent ways—a glance here, a blush there. Just look at Lizzie McGuire , the beloved Disney Channel show about a 13-year-old that Turning Red director Domee Shi cites as an influence for her film: Over the course of 65 episodes, the titular teen has crushes, and her panicked inner thoughts sometimes come to life through an animated version of her—but not once does the show mention menstruation or let Lizzie venture anywhere close to having a truly untamed moment of attraction.

Rather than ignoring the topic, Turning Red handles the more mature elements of Mei’s coming-of-age with a refreshing playfulness. Mei is passionate about her newfound desires, sketching her crush over and over in her notebook while at the same time being utterly confused about this habit. When she finishes a drawing, she lets out a cackle that radiates a mix of utter delight and deep shame. When she finally sees 4*Town onstage, her eyes widen and glitter like those of an anime character, and she cries waterfalls, not droplets, of tears. These are outsize, cartoonish reactions, and in their outrageousness they depict the overwhelming emotional reality of young teens. Being 13 is an agonizing experience, an age as far away from juvenile innocence as it is from outright adulthood, when an awareness begins to develop about grown-up dynamics but everything feels like a fever dream because so much is changing. No encounter is casual. No feeling is small.

Read: The bloody, brutal business of being a teenage girl

At the same time, Turning Red understands the sensitivity of the story that it’s telling. In spite of some parents’ complaints about the film being “inappropriate,” the movie is quite gentle in its exploration of Mei’s sexuality. Mei draws her crush as a merman—a fantasy more risible than racy. She longs for the attention of a boy band, perhaps the most wholesome of celebrity idols to have. Menstrual pads are seen on-screen, but the word period is never uttered. Mei’s interest in boys is presented as a part of growing up, a part that can be just as disconcerting, stormy, and meaningful as, say, dealing with bullies or navigating parental expectations. Most important, she’s not the only one who’s “boy crazy”; she has friends with whom she can express her anxieties, and Turning Red emphasizes the value of communicating about and embracing vulnerabilities. That leaves room for parents to join the conversation, to fill in the blanks for children curious to understand more about Mei’s complicated feelings.

In other words, Turning Red is a gift. It is a film that takes its young audience seriously, trusting that they’ll see in Mei a character whose emotions are normal for her age. Just because she’s “cringe” doesn’t make her inappropriate or offensive; her clumsiness with her desires only makes her even more well-suited to introducing preteen viewers to an inevitable (and unenviable) time to come. Parents should have a say in what their children watch, but to deny them movies like this one is to give them the false impression that lust is aberrant, even nonexistent. Try as they might, though, an “awooga” moment like Mei’s is a force too powerful to discipline.

Related Podcast

Listen to Shirley Li discuss Turning Red on an episode of The Atlantic ’s culture podcast The Review :

Everything To Know About The Turning Red Controversy

The Pixar cast responded to the hurtful criticism.

Pixar’s newest movie Turning Red landed on Disney+ earlier this month in a direct-to-streaming release, and it’s a milestone film for the animation powerhouse: It’s the first Pixar film to be directed by a woman, Domee Shi , and the second film (after 2009’s Up ) to feature an Asian lead character. Plus, the film currently holds a 95% on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, indicating universal acclaim. Despite the massive fanfare, the film is currently embroiled in an online controversy that feels depressingly familiar to champions of Asian and female representation onscreen.

Meilin “Mei” Lee (voiced by newcomer Rosalie Chiang) is a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl growing up in Toronto whose puberty is hitting different. While we all dealt with mood swings, acne flare-ups, and general discomfort in our bodies at that age, Mei’s coming of age is taking on a different form, literally. She turns into a giant red panda any time she feels a strong emotion. A family gene, her parents initially believe her transformation is brought on by the confusion of her first period.

The focus on Asian culture and talk of periods have colored the reactions to and discourse around the film. In a now-deleted review , CinemaBlend Managing Editor Sean O’Connell lamented that he couldn’t identify with Mei’s story, and therefore the entire project was “limited in scope.” His language specifically focused on the cultural setting, making the bizarre conclusion that a story set in Toronto’s Asian community somehow made the film too “specific and narrow” to be enjoyed by the masses. O’Connell defended his thoughts in a now-deleted tweet, which called the film “exhausting” due to his inability to see himself within the story. O’Connell and CinemaBlend’s editor in chief have since apologized for the review.

Many on Twitter were quick to jump to the film’s defense — especially in the cultural critic corner of the social network — citing classic animated movies as examples of films that did not portray realistic stories but were not met with the same scrutiny. NPR’s Linda Holmes tweeted tongue-in-cheek, “I too prefer more universally relatable heroes such as cars with eyeballs,” and the New Yorker ’s Emily Nussbaum expressed her rage in line with the film : “I thought that people were probably overreacting to that Seeing Red review, but then I read it and turned into a massive bristling red panda.”

The film’s cast even reacted to the review and the surrounding controversy, doubling down on the universal message in an interview with CBC . Chiang said, “This is a coming of age film … I think different people of different cultures are going to go through it differently, but at the end of the day, the core messiness and change is something everyone can relate to.” Never Have I Ever’s Maitreyi Ramakrishnan , who voices Mei’s friend Priya, also supported that sentiment, stating that people will be able to relate to the film “regardless of whether you are a young Chinese girl from Canada or not.” (CinemaBlend and O’Connell did not directly respond to the cast’s reaction.)

In more recent days, Turning Red has been trending for an entirely different reason. Some parents have taken to social media to complain about the film’s menstruation storyline, which they’ve deemed too mature for PG audiences, even though the average person who menstruates gets their first period at age 12. Twitter users have called it “inappropriate,” and the conservative website The Federalist described the film as an “embarrassing allegory about menstruation” while also echoing O’Connell’s sentiment that the film’s topics make it limiting for wider audiences. Writer Peter Pischke takes specific care to diminish the film’s “tampon talk” as though getting your first period isn’t a real, sometimes frightening, and universal part of many coming-of-age stories.

Many on Twitter have weighed in with their happiness in seeing the storyline as well as their disbelief about the controversy. One user stated , “It’s actually insane how many people are bothered by the period talk in Turning Red because young kids will see the movie. A LOT of girls get their periods at like 8 years old. I was 10.”

Some also lauded the fact that Turning Red shows a wide array of menstrual products, demystifying pads, tampons, and other hygienic alternatives. “The way I sobbed when I saw the pads in #TurningRed . Women are so often reduced to smaller versions of themselves, either sexualized or non-existent. To see a film list out different kinds of hygiene products with such normalcy was moving,” a Twitter user said .

Despite the ongoing controversy, the overwhelmingly positive response and impressive global streaming viewership records prove audiences are ready for more diverse adolescent stories.

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Movie Reviews

'turning red' confronts the messiness of adolescence with refreshing honesty.

Justin Chang

In Turning Red , 13-year-old Mei Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) "poofs" into a giant red panda whenever she gets too excited. Disney/Pixar hide caption

In Turning Red , 13-year-old Mei Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) "poofs" into a giant red panda whenever she gets too excited.

Three years ago, the writer-director Domee Shi won an Oscar for her delightful Pixar animated short, Bao . In telling the sweet and surreal story of a Chinese Canadian mother and a steamed dumpling that comes to life, it captured something funny and poignant about the cultural and generational differences that can divide Asian immigrant families.

With her first feature, Turning Red , Shi leans further into the complexities of Asian parent-child relationships — and this time, she's come up with an even wilder conceit. If you were to mash together Carrie and The Joy Luck Club , and somehow still get away with a PG rating, it might look a bit like this movie.

The story is set in the early 2000s, and it follows a 13-year-old girl named Meilin Lee, voiced by Rosalie Chiang, who lives in Toronto's Chinatown. Mei is an obedient overachiever, a straight-A student who spends her free time helping her parents run a temple built to honor their Chinese ancestors.

While Mei's father is shy and mostly stays out of the way, her mother, Ming — a terrific Sandra Oh — is attentive to the point of overbearing. In addition to being super-involved with Mei's studies, Ming rigorously polices her daughter's social life, in hopes that she won't be too influenced by Western ways.

But while Mei may look like the perfect daughter, she has interests of her own, like any teenager. She's starting to notice boys, and she and her friends are particularly obsessed with an 'N Sync -style boy band. And then one morning, in a twist that riffs on Kafka's The Metamorphosis and countless werewolf movies, she discovers that she's turned into an enormous red panda, with bright red-orange fur and a long, bushy tail. She promptly flips out.

Movie Interviews

In pixar's first female-directed short, a dumpling child fills an empty nest.

Director Shi, who wrote the script with Julia Cho, confronts the messiness of adolescence with an honesty that's refreshing in the world of studio animation. Mei's transformation is clearly a metaphor for the onset of puberty, when your body betrays you and becomes unrecognizable overnight. But it's a metaphor for something else, too. As it turns out, the red-panda effect is the result of some very ancient Chinese magic that's been passed down to Mei through the women in her family.

It may be a ridiculous setup, but as in most Pixar movies, even the most outlandish plot devices have their own narrative logic. Mei soon figures out that her panda persona is triggered by intense emotions; whenever she calms down, she turns back into her human self.

Her mom instructs her to suppress her feelings and the panda along with it. But then something funny happens: Her friends find out about the panda, and rather than being weirded out by it, they think it's the cutest, coolest thing ever. Soon, Mei is newly popular and having the time of her life, and she starts to wonder: What if the panda, far from being some shameful aberration, is actually the truest expression of her happy, goofy, emotional self?

And so Turning Red tells a story about shame, repression and social anxiety — areas that I, like more than a few Asian Americans, know a thing or two about. During the movie, I found myself sometimes wincing in recognition at Mei's tension and embarrassment as she's torn between her family and friends. I also balked at moments that seemed to exaggerate for comic effect, especially when it came to Mei's mother, who's clearly been conceived along the lines of the controversial "tiger mom" stereotype.

All of which is to say that Turning Red gives you a lot of ideas to grapple with. It also gives you a lot to look at. Director Shi and her collaborators have a lot of fun incorporating East Asian influences into the story and animation. You can see touches of Japanese anime in the character design; Mei's panda has the fluffy, oversized proportions of Hayao Miyazaki 's Totoro. The action-heavy climax manages to salute kaiju movies like Godzilla and martial-arts epics like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon .

Turning Red knows that teenage life can sometimes feel like a monster movie and sometimes it's an action movie — and now, happily, it's a Pixar movie, and one of the bolder ones to come along in a while.

Morning Rundown: Trump's abortion maneuvering comes back to haunt him, China's middle class struggles to hang on, stranded sailors rescued after 'HELP' sign spotted

'Turning Red' cast responds after controversial review pulled offline

“ Turning Red ” cast members spoke up in support of the new  Pixar  film and its universality following a controversial review for the animated movie that was published by CinemaBlend. The review was pulled offline after being called “sexist,” “racist” and more by members of the press. CinemaBlend managing director Sean O’Connell wrote the review, saying that the film’s appeal was limited because it’s set in the Asian community of Toronto.

“I recognized the humor in the film, but connected with none of it. By rooting ‘Turning Red’ very specifically in the Asian community of Toronto, the film legitimately feels like it was made for [director] Domee Shi’s friends and immediate family members,” O’Connell wrote in the since-pulled review. “Which is fine — but also, a tad limiting in its scope.”

O’Connell doubled down on his opinion of the film in a since-deleted tweet that accompanied his review. The post read: “Some Pixar films are made for universal audiences. ‘Turning Red’ is not. The target audience for this one feels very specific and very narrow. If you are in it, this might work very well for you. I am not in it. This was exhausting.”

“Turning Red” is directed by Domee Shi, who won an Oscar for animated short film with her Pixar offering “Bao.” The film tells the story of Meilin “Mei” Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang), a 13-year-old girl who finds herself turning into a giant red panda anytime she is overcome with emotion.

When asked by the  CBC  if “Turning Red’s” storyline would limit its appeal as the review suggested, voice actor Chiang responded, “Of course not. This is a coming of age film, everyone goes through this change… I think different people of different cultures are going to go through it differently, but at the end of the day, the core messiness and change is something everyone can relate to.”

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, the breakout star of Netflix’s comedy series “Never Have I ever” who voices Mei’s friend in the film, also called the movie’s story “universal” in reacting to the pulled review. The actor added, “[Many people will be able] to relate to Meilin’s story, regardless of whether you are a young Chinese girl from Canada or not.”

Domee Shi also disagreed with the review and told CBC, “[The film] is a love letter to that time of our lives. It’s a love letter to puberty. It’s a love letter to Toronto.”

CinemaBlend announced Tuesday that the review was pulled from its website. CinemaBlend Editor-In-Chief Mack Rawden issued the following statement: “We failed to properly edit this review, and it never should have gone up. We have unpublished it and assigned to someone else. We have also added new levels of editorial oversight. Thank you to everyone who spoke up.”

O’Connell also issued the following apology on Twitter: “I’m genuinely sorry for my ‘Turning Red’ review. Thank you to everyone who has reached out with criticism, no matter how harsh. It is clear that I didn’t engage nearly enough with the movie, nor did I explain my point of view well, at all. I really appreciate your feedback.”

Despite pulling the review, backlash against O’Connell and CinemaBlend continued. As Entertainment Weekly digital editor Yolanda Machado fired back on Twitter, “This [review] was written by your managing director, not some junior writer. As an editor, there is no amount of editing that would have erased the racism. What are you doing to make sure he is held accountable and this doesn’t happen again?”

“Turning Red” debuts March 11 on  Disney Plus .

Turning Red is for everyone, cast says after review calls film about Chinese-Canadian girl unrelatable

'we failed to properly edit this review, and it never should have gone up,' wrote cinemablend editor-in-chief.

Director, cast of Turning Red say movie is for everyone

Social sharing.

A review posted on website CinemaBlend of Disney-Pixar's new animated film Turning Red was pulled Tuesday, after some readers lambasted it for ignoring the cultural experience of its creator — and the film's cast argued that it very much depicts a universal experience. 

The film, which premieres on Friday, is directed and co-written by Canadian animator Domee Shi and will be Pixar's first feature-length film directed by an Asian woman. The movie follows the story of Meilin (Mei) Lee, a 13-year-old Chinese Canadian girl living in Toronto who discovers she has the ability to turn into a giant red panda.

The review, written by CinemaBlend managing director Sean O'Connell, complained that the film's focus on Lee's Asian background — as well as plot lines that revolve around Lee's struggles through puberty as a young girl — limited the film's ability to connect with audiences. 

"I recognized the humour in the film, but connected with none of it," O'Connell wrote in his review. 

"By rooting Turning Red very specifically in the Asian community of Toronto, the film legitimately feels like it was made for Domee Shi's friends and immediate family members. Which is fine — but also, a tad limiting in its scope."

Disney-Pixar film Turning Red puts Canada in the spotlight

When asked whether that might be a problem for audiences, Turning Red 's cast disagreed.

"Of course not," Rosalie Chiang, who plays Lee, told CBC News in an interview. "This is a coming of age film, everyone goes through this change … I think different people of different cultures are going to go through it differently, but at the end of the day, the core messiness and change is something everyone can relate to."

Canadian actor Maitreyi Ramakrishnan — who plays Lee's friend Priya — described the story of Lee's friends and family as "universal," and that many people will be able "to relate to Meilin's story, regardless of whether you are a young Chinese girl from Canada or not."

Shi also disagreed with the review, saying that the film "is a love letter to that time of our lives. It's a love letter to puberty. It's a love letter to Toronto."

Critic, editor-in-chief issue apologies

Much of the criticism around the review stemmed from O'Connell discounting elements of Asian culture as alienating.

The review pointed to another film, The Mitchells vs. The Machines as an animated film that "bothered to include plot elements everyone could find engaging," and pointed to Turning Red 's "mystical red panda bit" as particularly difficult for audiences to identify with. 

Hours after the post went up — and after hundreds of comments online complaining about the content — CinemaBlend pulled the review, and both O'Connell and editor-in-chief Mack Rawden issued apologies. 

• Eli's movie picks for 2022: Superheroes, sequels, animation — and lots of Brad Pitt
• Where to watch this year's Oscar-nominated films

"I'm genuinely sorry for my Turning Red review," O'Connell posted on Twitter. "Thank you to everyone who has reached out with criticism, no matter how harsh."

"It is clear that I didn't engage nearly enough with the movie, nor did I explain my point of view well, at all. I really appreciate your feedback."

In a tweet shared by the CinemaBlend account, Rawden stated the site "failed to properly edit" O'Connell's review. He stated that the review had been reassigned to another writer, and the site has since added "new levels of editorial oversight."

We failed to properly edit this review, and it never should have gone up. We have unpublished it and assigned to someone else. We have also added new levels of editorial oversight. Thank you to everyone who spoke up. - Mack Rawden, Editor-In-Chief <a href="https://t.co/kfkfwlf4q8">https://t.co/kfkfwlf4q8</a> &mdash; @CinemaBlend

In a since-deleted tweet promoting the review, O'Connell further said that while "some Pixar films are made for a universal audience, Turning Red is not."

"If you are in [the target audience], this might work well for you. I am not in it. This was exhausting."

Pixar's Turning Red cast and director talk Asian representation, Toronto pride

When contacted by CBC, O'Connell declined to comment for this article. 

Turning Red is scheduled to premiere on Friday, March 11, and currently holds a 94 per cent "fresh" rating on review-aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes.

While it was originally scheduled to debut in theatres as well as online, earlier this year president of Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution Kareem Daniel said Turning Red  will premiere solely on the Disney+ streaming platform "due to the delay in the recovery of family films in theatres caused by the ongoing pandemic."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jackson Weaver is a senior writer for CBC Entertainment News. You can reach him at [email protected], or follow him on Twitter at @jacksonwweaver

With files from Eli Glasner

Related Stories

• How China's movie muscle is changing its relationship with Hollywood
• Pamela Anderson 'setting the record straight' in upcoming Netflix documentary
• TIFF to 'suspend participation' of Russian film delegations over Ukraine invasion

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, turning red.

Now streaming on:

Back in middle school, when she was barely a young teen, this critic had, ahem, a massive crush on a boy one year her senior.

I can’t recall if we were already a couple when I foolishly filled my notebook with his name and some sappily romantic sentiments one evening, not knowing that the embarrassing pad would soon be discovered by my annoyingly overprotective detective of a mother. But I do remember sweating in shame, fear, confusion, and panic when she yanked the notebook from under me (in desperation, I sat on it to unsuccessfully hide the evidence of my young love) and started flipping the pages in utter shock and anger.

Now imagine my astonishment during Oscar-winning “Bao” helmer Domee Shi ’s masterful animation “Turning Red,” while I watched its 13-year-old central character undergo a similar episode with her own mother! The heroine in question is the overachieving Meilin ( Rosalie Chiang )—Mei for her loved ones—growing up too fast with her budding hormones and changing body amid her Chinese-Canadian family in the Toronto of the early aughts. A slightly dorky straight-A student she may be, but there's nothing anyone could do to stop her from noticing all the good-looking boys—particularly a local store clerk—that she and her best friends frequently gush over. That anyone includes her disciplined, willowy mother Ming ( Sandra Oh ), who discovers Mei’s notebook of suggestive heartthrob drawings in furious disbelief. What’s Mei to do if not literally turn red and POOF, transform into a furry, monstrously cute red panda in the midst of navigating all these intense emotions? (Why hadn't I thought of this when I was similarly busted? And more importantly, where was this movie when I was growing up?)

And that is the genius of “Turning Red,” a radical, brazenly hormonal PG movie that instantly fills a huge void in the lives of awkward, novel female teens who might just be starting to crawl out of their childhood cocoons with a disharmony of mystifying awakenings and sexual feelings. That achievement is perhaps no surprise coming from Pixar, a studio that can always be trusted for a generous dose of reflective, grown-up nostalgia as well as a good old-fashioned coming-of-age saga. After all, weren’t some of the best characters of the fiercely inventive animation house—from the talking dolls of the “ Toy Story ” franchise to the corporeal feelings of “ Inside Out ,” the rebellious princess of “ Brave ,” and the aspiring young musician of “ Coco ”—gloriously defined by its signature preoccupations? Still, “Turning Red” (which deserves a lot better than the straight-to-streaming fate Disney has bestowed upon it) feels pioneering and surprising even for the shop behind the groundbreaking animated sci-fi “WALL-E.” For starters, never before has a Disney female ever been asked, “Has the red peony blossomed?” as an inquiry about the start of her menstruation. 

In that regard, “Turning Red” is both a triumphant thematic homecoming for the company and a welcome outlier within the Pixar canon that is, exceptions aside, typically over-flooded with male-centric narratives. What’s even greater about it is its recognizable foundation carrying shades of various superhero tales and the likes of “Teen Wolf” (the 1985 one). You know, stories in which boys and men hide behind their alter-egos while they make sense of the new eyes through which they see the world. 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 inner red panda and figures out that as long as she keeps a cool and collected demeanor sans emotions with a little help from her friends, the pink brute won’t take over. Who knows, she could perhaps even lead a normal life and even have some fun along the way. But that’s easier said than done when you’re a teenage girl defined by your wobbly mood swings and the time you spend with your equally frenzied group of friends. In Mei’s case, her girlhood clan consists of the sharp-tongued Abby ( Hyein Park ), nonconformist Miriam ( Ava Morse ), and the nonchalant Priya ( Maitreyi Ramakrishnan ). Together, the celebrated quartet swing from one trouble to the next, trying to do everything they can to see their dreamy boy band 4*Town in concert. (The five-member band does have some actual bangers in the film, written by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell.) But with Mei’s plush red panda slightly altering their plans, the friends finds themselves at a crossroads that directly concerns the young Mei’s future.

As it turns out, Mei had been cursed with a spell passed on through the generations of women in her family. And it can only be broken if she willingly participates in a strenuous ritual that would keep her nuisance alter-ego safely tucked away forever. Through this dilemma, Shi beautifully constructs a traditional tale of generational clash between Mei and her mother, filling their unity and contradictions with thoughtful details of their urban life: the family temple they run as a tourist attraction, the elaborate, studiously cooked meals, the domestic support that runs deep within their household. The animation style—infused with traditional motifs, interludes of anime, and a zippy energy—rises to the occasion, vividly painting Mei’s world with the same level of intricacy Shi and Cho conjure up on the page. While the film’s slightly bloated finale overpowers some of the leaner moments that come before it, “Turning Red” flickers with a bright feminine spirit, one that feels new, crimson-deep, and unapologetically rebellious.

On Disney+ on Friday, March 11th.

Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly is a freelance film writer and critic based in New York. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), she regularly contributes to  RogerEbert.com , Variety and Time Out New York, with bylines in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Journal International, Vulture, The Playlist and The Wrap, among other outlets.

Now playing

Sleeping Dogs

Brian tallerico.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

Christy lemire.

Ricky Stanicky

Monica castillo.

Film Credits

Turning Red (2022)

Rated PG for thematic material, suggestive content and language.

100 minutes

Rosalie Chiang as Mei Lee (voice)

Sandra Oh as Ming (voice)

Jordan Fisher as Robaire (voice)

Grayson Villanueva as Tae Young (voice)

Josh Levi as Aaron Z. (voice)

Topher Ngo as Aaron T. (voice)

Finneas O'Connell as Jesse (voice)

Orion Lee as Jin Lee (voice)

Wai Ching Ho as Mei's Grandma (voice)

Ava Morse as Miriam (voice)

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan as Priya (voice)

Hyein Park as Abby (voice)

Addie Chandler as Devon (voice)

Cinematographer

• Jonathan Pytko
• Mahyar Abousaeedi
• Nicholas C. Smith
• Steve Bloom
• Ludwig Göransson

Latest blog posts

A Plea for Someone to Save Megalopolis

The End of the World is Going to be Weird on Prime Video’s Quirky, Clever Adaptation of Fallout

The Zellner Brothers Take a Walk in the Woods with Sasquatch Sunset

The Scene That Clint Eastwood Cut to Make Unforgiven a Classic

Find anything you save across the site in your account

There Is More Than One Way to Be Exhausted by “Turning Red”

“Turning Red,” Pixar’s twenty-fifth feature film, contains a lot of firsts. It’s the first Pixar feature directed solely by a woman, Domee Shi, whose “Bao,” from 2018, won an Oscar for Best Animated Short. It’s also the first Pixar film set in Canada—in Toronto, where Shi grew up. The coming-of-age story follows a thirteen-year-old Chinese Canadian girl, Meilin Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang), whose first period triggers yet another first: she turns into a giant red panda. This transformation recurs whenever she is overcome with intense feelings, be they of lust, rage, or embarrassment. To a great extent, the film is a depiction of how Meilin adjusts to her new bodily functions around her school friends and, especially, her strict Chinese mother, Ming (Sandra Oh).

The “gross red monster,” as Meilin calls herself whenever she takes on the panda form, can be read as an obvious metaphor for menstruation—at least at first. (It could be a metaphor for blushing, too, and maybe there’s some palimpsest trace of Communist menace in there as well.) Like the monsters in “Monsters, Inc.” or Bing Bong the elephant in “ Inside Out ” (on which Shi worked as a storyboard artist), Meilin’s red panda initially appears as though it were a figment of a child’s imagination. Unlike previous movies such as “Monsters, Inc.,” “Turning Red” makes the monster real to children and adults alike. “Perhaps we should talk about why this is happening,” Ming says the first time her daughter emerges from her bedroom as a fluffy, red creature. “You’re a woman now, and your body is starting to change.” Ming doesn’t bat an eye at her daughter’s metamorphosis because she has gone through the same process herself. As Meilin soon learns, turning into a red panda is an ancient, matrilineal Chinese curse. In this way, the gendered trope of “Turning Red” (getting your period) bleeds into the ethnic trope of “Turning Red” (becoming a red panda). The parallel red scares here are united under the trope of turning Chinese. And why not? In the growing panoply of culturally inflected Pixar films, it was only a matter of time before the studio featured China. This, too, is a first for Pixar.

Since its release on Disney+ earlier this month, “Turning Red” has been received positively for its portrayal of women’s reproductive processes and Chinese Canadian culture. It unfolds amid the turmoil and chaos of Chinese girlhood in 2002, when Tamagotchis were all the rage, cell phones hadn’t completely caught on yet, everyone drank milk from bags, and Toronto’s Rogers Centre was still called the SkyDome. “Toronto is awesome, and I don’t see it in movies a lot,” Shi told Toronto Life. “And everyone at Pixar was on board with the idea. For some reason, Americans are always amused by Canadian things. It actually helped me sell the pitch even more.” The cultural specificity of “Turning Red” irked an American critic, Sean O’Connell of CinemaBlend, who, in a review so controversial that it has since been taken down, wrote that the film “feels like it was made for Domee Shi’s friends and immediate family members.” The review continued: “There’s an audience out there for Turning Red . And when that audience finds the movie, I’ve no doubt they will celebrate it for the unique animal that it is. In my opinion, however, that audience is relatively small, and I’m not part of it.”

[ Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » ]

As a Chinese immigrant who grew up in Canada around the same time as Shi and Meilin, I might be considered among those O’Connell imagines to be the target audience for “Turning Red.” (In elementary school, I even picked the red panda as my chosen species for a science project.) Yet I, too, found the film, as O’Connell puts it, to be “a jumble of familiar ideas and manic energy that exhausted me”—though perhaps not in the same way that it exhausted him. The manic energy is surely intentional, at least insofar as puberty works up nontrivial surges of eros and frenetic drive that need to get displaced somewhere . (As a Pixar heroine, Meilin is obnoxious enough to be weirdly refreshing.) In “Turning Red,” Meilin and her friends’ sexual awakening largely gets worked out through their collective obsession with the boy band 4*Town, a group that scans like an algorithmic mashup of ’NSync, Backstreet Boys, O-Town, and the Canadian pop sensation soulDecision. In private, Meilin explores her burgeoning desires by sketching her crush in exaggeratedly chiselled form—an Adonis-like rendering that seems to outpace Meilin’s own recognition of her desires.

The unabashed portrayal of adolescent sexuality is inspired, but the film’s embrace of girlish horniness gets muddied by its parallel representation of Chineseness. When Meilin first “turns red,” Ming lurks outside her classroom window with a box of pads, drawing the attention of seemingly the entire school. Chinese mothers are overbearing, sure. But they are not typically overbearing in this way. In its effort to meld a celebration of Chinese culture with the destigmatization of gendered taboos, “Turning Red” renders these tropes as at once hyper-specific and alienating. The movie’s Asian stereotypes are neither winkingly ironized nor reanimated into something like realism.

The CinemaBlend review of “Turning Red” wasn’t smart, but it wasn’t necessarily wrong. Had the critic pushed his analysis further, he might have discerned that the chaotic overlap of identity-politics plots—Chinese mothers, horny girls, the cold, hard facts of reproductive biology—is exactly what guards the film from any meaningful critique. If one sees the movie as too sexualized or adult-themed for a young audience, that suggests only the conservatism and squeamishness of the critic. The literalism of “Turning Red” is, of course, part of the point—in making a topic that is still socially taboo friendly to all ages, Pixar works to undo the shame attached to something as banal as getting your period. But the film does so by distorting other cultural tropes, such as the tiger mother, who, in this rendition, literally shoves pads into her daughter’s face. Gender and ethnicity work as mutually reinforcing shields; in order to make female puberty everyone’s problem, “Turning Red” turns it into a Chinese person’s problem. It’s a film as messy as its subject matter.

New Yorker Favorites

Searching for the cause of a catastrophic plane crash .

The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool .

Gloria Steinem’s life on the feminist frontier .

Where the Amish go on vacation .

How Colonel Sanders built his Kentucky-fried fortune .

What does procrastination tell us about ourselves ?

Fiction by Patricia Highsmith: “The Trouble with Mrs. Blynn, the Trouble with the World”

Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker .

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Kyle Chayka

By Eric Lach

By Amanda Petrusich

By Nick Paumgarten

Advertisement

Supported by

‘Turning Red’ Review: Beware the Red-Furred Monster

A 13-year-old girl becomes a red panda when she loses her cool in Domee Shi’s heartwarming but wayward coming-of-age film.

• Share full article

By Maya Phillips

A quirky Asian teenager transforms into a giant red panda whenever she gets excited … even the premise gives me pause. Which makes the task of reviewing the new Disney/Pixar film “Turning Red” (on Disney+ March 11) especially tricky. Because that’s the idea behind this sometimes heartwarming but wayward coming-of-age movie, which toes the line between truthfully representing a Chinese family, flaws and all, and indulging stereotypes.

Meilin Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) is a typical 13-year-old girl: She dances, has crushes on boys and has a cohort of weird but loyal besties who share her obsession with the glossy-lipped members of the boy band 4*Town. She’s also Chinese Canadian, living in Toronto in 2002, where her family maintains a temple. There she helps her loving but overbearing mother, Ming (Sandra Oh), and tries to be the perfect daughter — even when that means burying her own thoughts and desires in the process. This becomes a lot more difficult when she goes through her changes — not of the period variety, but the panda kind.

The character writing and design are where “Turning Red,” directed by Domee Shi , most succeeds. Mei has the relatable swagger of the middle school cool nerd — she’s creative and confident, and also has a perfect report card. The tomboy skater girl Miriam, the deadpan Priya and the hilariously fiery Abby form a funky trifecta of gal pals who are Mei’s emotional safety net. And Ming strikes an impressive balance between dictatorial and doting, dismissing Mei’s friends and interests but also stalking her at school to ply her with steamed buns.

Shi finds subtle yet effective ways to illustrate the personalities of even the ancillary characters, from the stiffly applied makeup of Mei’s grandmother (Ho-Wai Ching) to the flamboyant open-toed footwear of the gang of aunties who follow Grandma Lee around. And the animation of Mei’s hair in her panda form — how it lays flat when she’s calm or spikes upward when she’s mad — reinforces her emotional shifts.

It’s no surprise that these kinds of expressions are where Shi’s direction most shines; as in her 2018 Oscar-winning Pixar short “Bao,” “Turning Red” lives and breathes on the complex emotional relationship between a mother and a child preparing to leave the nest. And also as in “Bao,” in which a mother raises a steamed bun child from birth to adulthood, here again Shi uses a culturally specific metaphor to convey her characters’ emotions.

This is where “Turning Red” gets sticky: Though the plot’s red panda magic is rooted in its characters’ cultural traditions (the Lees honor an ancestor who defended her family with the power of a red panda), these details aren’t enough to absolve the film of its kid-friendly version of exoticism. After all, its characters profit off Mei’s cute and foreign transformation.

And when it comes down to the movie’s conflict, the antagonists are the women in Mei’s family. Or, more accurately, the suffocating cultural traditions and familial expectations that are embodied by the women. The fact that Mei’s grandmother gets the kind of shady introductory scene that you’d expect of the head honcho in a mobster flick, and that these women share the red panda affliction, means they fall into a formula of cold, emotionless Asian women. Is the film tackling the stereotype or fulfilling it? The line is too blurry to tell. By the end, a bit of understanding, empathy and a pandapocalypse reassures us that the stoic Asian dames aren’t the source of the problem but also victims, like Mei. Though I wonder what the movie would look like if the conflict wasn’t enacted solely in the form of these women.

“Turning Red” offers satisfying morsels despite its messiness, like the few throwbacks to the early aughts, including Tamagotchis and pre-BTS boy band mania. (4*Town’s criminally catchy songs, written by Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas O’Connell, are perfect reproductions of 2000s pop hits.)

It’s too bad that “Turning Red” fumbles its storytelling, because at the very least it has fun when it lets its fur fly.

Turning Red Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Watch on Disney+.

Maya Phillips is a critic at large. She is the author of the poetry collection “Erou” and “NERD: Adventures in Fandom From This Universe to the Multiverse,” forthcoming from Atria Books. More about Maya Phillips

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig have wound in and out of each other’s lives and careers for decades. Now they are both headlining an Apple TV+ comedy of wealth and status .

Nicholas Galitzine, known for playing princes and their modern equivalents, hopes his steamy new drama, “Mary & George,” will change how Hollywood sees him .

Ewan McGregor and Mary Elizabeth met while filming “Fargo” in 2017. Now married, they have reunited onscreen in “A Gentleman in Moscow.”

A reboot of “Gladiators,” the musclebound 1990s staple, has attracted millions of viewers in Britain. Is appointment television back ?

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings   on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime  and Hulu  to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter  to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy . We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

‘Turning Red’ Cast Speaks Out After Controversial Review Drew Outrage, Was Pulled by Outlet

Ryan lattanzio, deputy editor, film.

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Share on LinkedIn
• Show more sharing options
• Submit to Reddit
• Post to Tumblr
• Print This Page
• Share on WhatsApp

The cast and filmmakers behind Disney/ Pixar ‘s upcoming animated feature “ Turning Red ” have spoken out to tout its universal coming-of-age themes after a review posted by outlet CinemaBlend on Tuesday generated online backlash. The review, written by the site’s managing director Sean O’Connell, was pulled by the outlet after press on social media took issue with the article for its perceived sexist and racist viewpoints.

The film, directed and co-written by Oscar winner Domee Shi, centers on a 13-year-old girl named Mei Lee, who is torn between family loyalty and the chaos of puberty and the growing pains of middle school. Along the way, she routinely turns into a giant red panda.

“Throughout ‘Turning Red,’ Domee Shi and her co-screenwriter Julia Cho pepper in jokes and references that will speak directly to teenage girls, be it their bonds over sappy pop songs, or their heated lust for older teen dudes,” O’Connell’s since-deleted review said. “Without question, ‘Turning Red’ is the horniest movie in Pixar history, which parents no doubt will find surprising. I recognized the humor in the film, but connected with none of it. By rooting ‘Turning Red’ very specifically in the Asian community of Toronto, the film legitimately feels like it was made for Domee Shi’s friends and immediate family members. Which is fine… but also, a tad limiting in its scope.”

In a since-deleted tweet sharing the review, O’Connell wrote, “Some Pixar films are made for universal audiences. ‘Turning Red’ is not. The target audience for this one feels very specific and very narrow. If you are in it, this might work very well for you. I am not in it. This was exhausting.”

O’Connell’s review appeared to question the film’s appeal as a story about a young girl of Asian background going through the changes of youth.

In an interview with CBC , Rosalie Chiang, who voices Mai, disagreed with the review, saying, “This is a coming-of-age film. Everyone goes through this change. … I think different people of different cultures are going to go through it differently, but at the end of the day, the core messiness and change is something everyone can relate to.”

Co-star Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, who voices Mei’s friend Priya, echoed Chiang’s remarks, saying that audiences will be able “to relate to Meilin’s story, regardless of whether you are a young Chinese girl from Canada or not.”

Director Shi, also disagreeing with the review, added that the film “is a love letter to that time of our lives. It’s a love letter to puberty. It’s a love letter to Toronto.”

In the hours after the review was posted on Tuesday, CinemaBlend pulled the article, with Editor-in-Chief Mack Rawden issuing an apology on Twitter and announcing the outlet would assign the film to another writer. “We failed to properly edit this review, and it never should have gone up. We have unpublished it and assigned to someone else. We have also added new levels of editorial oversight. Thank you to everyone who spoke up,” Rawden wrote. See below.

O’Connell also went on to issue an apology for the review, tweeting, “I’m genuinely sorry for my ‘Turning Red’ review. Thank you to everyone who has reached out with criticism, no matter how harsh. It is clear that I didn’t engage nearly enough with the movie, nor did I explain my point of view well, at all. I really appreciate your feedback.”

“This was written by your MANAGING DIRECTOR not some junior writer,” Entertainment Weekly digital editor Yolanda Machado wrote in response to the apology. “As an editor, there is no amount of editing that would have erased the racism. What are you doing to make sure he is held accountable and this doesn’t happen again? (has happened before!)”

Shi recently spoke to IndieWire about the particular risks of bringing a “magical puberty” story to Disney and Pixar. “It was definitely a risk to tackle that subject of a girl’s sexuality awakening on screen. But it was so important and funny, and a scene that we couldn’t not put it in the movie. It’s so real. [Puberty] has happened to all of us, every single adult. The challenge was how do we do it in a funny and unexpected way in a Disney movie.”

“Turning Red” heads straight to Disney+ on Friday, March 11.

We failed to properly edit this review, and it never should have gone up. We have unpublished it and assigned to someone else. We have also added new levels of editorial oversight. Thank you to everyone who spoke up. – Mack Rawden, Editor-In-Chief https://t.co/kfkfwlf4q8 — CinemaBlend (@CinemaBlend) March 8, 2022

Most Popular

You may also like.

Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

UK Edition Change

• UK Politics
• News Videos
• Paris 2024 Olympics
• Rugby Union
• Sport Videos
• John Rentoul
• Mary Dejevsky
• Andrew Grice
• Sean O’Grady
• Photography
• Theatre & Dance
• Culture Videos
• Food & Drink
• Health & Families
• Royal Family
• Electric Vehicles
• Car Insurance deals
• Lifestyle Videos
• UK Hotel Reviews
• News & Advice
• Simon Calder
• Australia & New Zealand
• South America
• C. America & Caribbean
• Middle East
• Politics Explained
• News Analysis
• Today’s Edition
• Home & Garden
• Broadband deals
• Fashion & Beauty
• Travel & Outdoors
• Sports & Fitness
• Sustainable Living
• Climate Videos
• Solar Panels
• Behind The Headlines
• On The Ground
• Decomplicated
• You Ask The Questions
• Binge Watch
• Travel Smart
• Watch on your TV
• Crosswords & Puzzles
• Most Commented
• Newsletters
• Ask Me Anything
• Virtual Events
• Betting Sites
• Online Casinos
• Wine Offers

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in

Turning Red: Pixar’s new film stirs debate among critics and fans

Film has received a mostly positive reception from critics, with some controversial exceptions, article bookmarked.

Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey

Get our the life cinematic email for free, thanks for signing up to the the life cinematic email.

Pixar ’s new animated film Turning Red has sparked much debate between critics and fans.

The coming-of-age story highlights the complexities of puberty from the perspective of 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian character Mei Lee, who has to decide between being an obedient daughter or giving into the mayhem of adolescence.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a critic’s rating of 94 per cent, and has been described as “heartwarming” and “joyous”.

The Independent’s critic Adam White called it “a charming coming-of-age story with lovely pops of imagination and a refreshing lack of queasiness”.

However, despite the positive critical reception, some viewers have accused the film of being “inappropriate”, while others have dismissed it as “woke brainwashing”.

Many have criticised the film’s encouragement of Mei Lee’s teenage disobedience, with one audience member on Rotten Tomatoes writing: “A flat rip off of Teen Wolf which suggests being rude to your parents and family is okay if you are an adolescent hitting puberty!”

Others attacked the open portrayal of menstruation, saying it was “over the top with puberty scenes”.

However, many fans and critics have defended the film, pointing out that puberty is an important topic that should be discussed.

Actor Dani Fernandez argued on Twitter: “It’s weird conservatives are sexualising Turning Red . I got my period in 5th grade. I was a child when I got it, like most children. I looked up the avg age. It’s 12. That’s a child. Therefore it is NOT an adult topic. You are SUPPOSED to know about them BEFORE they happen. [sic]”

One fan pointed out that, “We can have a million ‘boys will be boys’ coming of age narratives in films, but the moment we get a film that does the same for girls, suddenly it becomes taboo or ‘cringe’”.

Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days

New subscribers only. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled

Last week, a review of the film published by CinamaBlend received a backlash after it was accused of being “racist” and “sexist” by a number of readers. It has since been deleted.

CinemaBlend’s editor-in-chief Mack Rawden released a statement on Twitter apologising for the review and saying that it “never should have gone up”.

“I’m genuinely sorry for my Turning Red review,” critic Sean O’Connell said in his own statement issued via Twitter.

“Thank you to everyone who has reached out with criticism, no matter how harsh. It is clear that I didn’t engage nearly enough with the movie, nor did I explain my point of view well, at all. I really appreciate your feedback.”

Turning Red can be streamed on Disney+. Read The Independent’s full review here .

Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.

New to The Independent?

Or if you would prefer:

Want an ad-free experience?

Hi {{indy.fullName}}

• My Independent Premium
• Account details
• Help centre

‘Turning Red’ Review: A Growing Girl Becomes a Red Panda. So Where’s the Problem?

When hormones hit, a girl's body changes more than she bargained for. But Pixar puberty metaphor is so accepting as to eliminate the conflict of its own premise.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

• Cannes Film Festival Reveals Lineup: Coppola, Cronenberg, Lanthimos, Schrader and Donald Trump Portrait ‘The Apprentice’ in Competition 5 hours ago
• ‘Arcadian’ Review: Nicolas Cage Takes a Back Seat to Two Boys and a Bunch of Bugs in Clumsy Survival Thriller 22 hours ago
• Critic’s Notebook: Sharper Than Ever, French Crime Classic ‘Le Samouraï’ Might Be the Coolest Film Ever Made 2 days ago

Puberty is a monster — or more aptly, an adorable, uncontrollable giant panda — in Pixar ’s “ Turning Red .” An Oscar winner for her imaginative smothering-mother short “Bao,” helmer Domee Shi makes a worthy addition to the boys-club studio’s relatively small circle of feature directors, exploring another complicated Asian American (technically, Chinese-Canadian) parent-child dynamic, this time between a perfectionist tiger mom and the high-achieving yet deeply repressed teenage daughter who’s dying to let out her inner freak just a little.

For decades, boys could look to werewolves and the Incredible Hulk as colorful metaphors for mood swings and aggro outbursts, while girls have had considerably fewer models to draw on for the changes they face in adolescence — which is where Shi’s perky puberty allegory proves such a welcome innovation. One morning, after the most humiliating incident of her young life, 13-year-old Meilin Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) wakes up as a giant red panda — the reddish-brown, ringtail fox-like cousin of Beijing’s black-and-white Olympic mascot, rendered here as a big, cutesy-wootsy teddy bear.

Turns out, Mei triggered a magic spell that’s been passed down through female members of her family for generations, and which proves more than a little inconvenient in early-aughts Toronto. Mei’s typically attentive mom, Ming (Sandra Oh), is surprisingly slow to recognize what her daughter’s going through, mistaking Mei’s predicament for her first period. How many animated films can you name that deal with that taboo subject?

But Shi’s just getting started, as far as Pixar firsts are concerned. A decade ago, the studio booted director Brenda Chapman off “Brave,” which makes “Turning Red” — its 25th full-length toon and third direct-to-Disney Plus release — the only one to be fully overseen by a woman. And though Pixar previously let Pete Sohn (another of its shorts-trained helmers) graduate to directing “The Good Dinosaur,” this is the first of the company’s features to center the Asian experience.

Pixar can be slow to broaden its cultural horizons, but when it does, the results feel sincere, as in “Coco” or “Soul.” What’s most satisfying about “Turning Red” is the degree to which Shi gets to share so many aspects of her upbringing — based not on field trips to a foreign country, à la “Ratatouille” and “Up,” but on the cuisine and customs of its lead creator. The fact that said storyteller is a woman makes a world of difference, as Shi channels her insecure adolescent self into the film’s upbeat and relatable protagonist, embarrassing boy-band obsession and all. (She pushes the Pixar house style, incorporating signature anime touches in the characters’ exaggerated facial expressions and dynamic pose-to-pose blocking.)

Mei represents the kind of obedient “honor your parents” first-generation immigrant whose life choices are shaped by distant college plans. She loves math, aces every test and is overloaded with extracurricular activities, leaving hardly any free time for her three best friends: dependable rebel Miriam (Ava Morse), no-filter spaz Abby (Hyein Park) and possibly queer-coded Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan). As a result, Mei’s constantly apologizing to her buddies for ditching them to help out at the family shrine, where red pandas serve as a spirit animal of sorts.

But that’s before she actually becomes a panda herself. The change is startling at first, but reversible. Once Mei calms down, she reverts back to her old self. But every time her emotions spike, she “pandas” again: A fluffy tail and ears might sprout, or else her whole body will switch with an appealing “poof.” There may be shades of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in “Turning Red,” but Shi keeps the entire affair feeling light, holding back until very late in the game about the reason Ming is so worried. To Mei and her friends (and audiences too), “panda-ing” is a blast. But as far as her mom is concerned, Mei needs to follow a ritual on the next red moon to permanently rid herself of the curse.

Evidently, “curing” Mei is a pretty easy thing to do — as is managing the transformations, once she discovers the trick to switching back — which is perhaps the first clue that the character, who’s discovering dimensions of herself she never knew existed, may not want to go through with banishing her ungainly alter ego. (If this were the right choice, the movie would have made it harder.) What does the red panda represent exactly? Well, you could read it as any number of things. Mei describes it as the “messy part” of her personality, though it stands for anything about you that your parents tried to suppress but that really deserves to see the light of day.

That seemingly benign “embrace your inner weirdo” lesson places “Turning Red” squarely within a patronizing new cartoon trend, in which grown-ups are depicted as ignorant and desperately in need of a lesson only their children can provide. In the past year alone, “Luca,” “Encanto” and “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” all insisted that moppets know better than their parents. Now Pixar’s panda fantasy delivers another pandering message, insisting that still-immature Mei is fine as she is and her mom is the one who needs to change. That’s not wrong, necessarily, though such movies peddle empowerment at the expense of humility. Whatever happened to respecting one’s elders?

Such old-fogey objections aside, “Turning Red” represents a fresh change from traditional Pixar fare, eschewing the slightly fuddy-duddy nostalgia of “Toy Story” and “Cars” for a this-side-of-Y2K millennial mindset. The kids have cellphones and Tamagotchi-style virtual pets, and the thing Mei and her friends want most in the world is to see a boy band called 4*Town in concert. These five heartthrobs are presented as a joke, but their insidiously catchy single “Nobody Like U” — written by Billie Eilish and big brother Finneas O’Connell to sync with classic ’N Sync hits — will surely worm itself into your brain.

So will Shi and co-writer Julia Cho’s more serious ideas. Irresistibly cute and thoroughly unashamed of its own silliness, “Turning Red” may be second-tier Pixar, but the emotions run every bit as deep as in the studio’s best. Consider the magical scene in which Mei meets her mother as a young girl and gets to hear what pushy parents so rarely tell their children — perhaps the most resonant expression of long-withheld approval since the beauty parlor scene in “The Joy Luck Club,” when Tsai Chin’s character assures her daughter, “Now you make me happy.” Between this film and “Bao,” Shi has a gift for hatching allegories that translate well to animation. By unleashing her inner panda, she’s given girls everywhere inspiration to do the same.

Reviewed at El Capitan Theatre, Los Angeles, March 1, 2022. MPAA Rating: PG. Running time: 100 MIN.

• Production: (Animated) A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures release of a Disney presentation of a Pixar Animation Studios production. Producer: Lindsey Collins. Executive producers: Dan Scanlon, Pete Docter.
• Crew: Director: Domee Shi. Screenplay: Julia Cho, Domee Shi; story: Domee Shi, Julia Cho, Sarah Streicher. Camera: Mahyar Abousaeedi, Jonathan Pytko. Editor: Nicholas C. Smith. Music: Ludwig Göransson.
• With: Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Ava Morse, Hyein Park, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Orion Lee, Wai Ching Ho, Tristan Allerick Chen, Lori Tan Chinn.

More From Our Brands

Best multiplayer video games to play in 2024, this luxe 157-foot catamaran lets you explore the galápagos with a butler on hand 24/7, jake from state farm prepares for his own wnba draft moment, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, bridgerton season 3 trailer teases penelope and colin’s budding romance — watch, verify it's you, please log in.

Turning Red Controversy Is Exactly What Pixar Needed

The latest film from Pixar Animation Studios, Domee Shi's "Turning Red," has been met with an inordinate amount of controversy. From one critic deeming it too culturally specific and personal to be relatable to a wide audience (as reported by NBC News ), to online reviewers taking issue with its hyper-stylized, anime-inspired animation style, to numerous angry parents — as well as several conservative media outlets — lambasting it for its honest depiction of female puberty, periods, and teen rebellion, it's truly impressive how many feathers have been ruffled by a fun kids' comedy about a cute red panda. Things got to the point where outlets like Vox and The Daily Beast even felt the need to pen responses to the "Turning Red" ruckus, coming out in its defense as a harmless little movie that got senselessly dragged through the mud.

But here's the thing everybody seems to be missing: What if the controversy was not, in fact, senseless? In fact, what if it was not even a bad thing at all? Sure, it's understandable that fans of "Turning Red" — a brilliant, endearing movie by any measure — should want to shield it from the angry hordes and encourage as many families as possible to see it with an open mind. However, the very thing that makes "Turning Red" so brilliant and moving is its defiant, rule-breaking spirit. It's a movie that willfully invites controversy, in more ways than one. And, in fact, that's exactly what makes it a crucial turning point for Pixar at this juncture in its history.

Pixar used to be at the vanguard of Hollywood

What feelings do the words "Pixar movie" bring to your mind?

The common answer now may be a lot different from the one that was ordinarily given some years ago. For the past two and a half decades, Pixar has been a major cultural institution. First, courtesy of "Toy Story," it was the purveyor of tech newness that brought animated cinema into a brave new era by showing it was possible to tell moving, visually daffy stories with nothing but CGI. Then, from "Toy Story 2" and "Monsters, Inc." onward, it embarked on one of the most sterling runs from a film studio in recent memory, putting out hit after hit with an almost supernatural command of original, four-quadrant storytelling both kids and grown-ups could enjoy. Then, it parlayed all that goodwill into a period of radical experimentation within the medium it had inaugurated, exploring bold, untapped cinematic avenues that pushed the boundaries of what Hollywood considered "family entertainment." And then, inevitably, it was bought by Disney in 2006.

The last Pixar movies to begin production before the $7.4 billion House of Mouse buyout (via CNN ) were "Ratatouille," "WALL-E," and "Up" — three innovative, artistically outreaching masterpieces that exemplified what the Pixar team was capable of when working at the height of their powers with creative abandon. Following those three movies' development, Pixar began to function as a de-facto subsidiary of Disney. And it was then that something decisively shifted.

Disney put Pixar on a conformist path

By the late 2000s, Pixar's "headstart" in CGI animation had been exhausted. Competition from studios like DreamWorks and even Disney itself was becoming stiffer and stiffer, with CGI animation by then a tamed beast, and the "Pixar model" of smart, tear-jerking, adult-friendly kids' cinema now fully industrialized and imitable. Pixar could, of course, have continued to stand out from the pack by sticking to the ambitious avant-garde path it had begun to chart during the "Ratatouille"-"Up" run. But the Mouse doesn't do avant-garde : It pigeonholes, and optimizes commercially.

In an ominous sign of things to come, Pixar's immediate first mission after the buyout was to salvage the "Toy Story" threequel Disney had been trying to strong-arm into production without them . Sure, they succeeded with flying colors. "Toy Story 3" is still one of the greatest sequels of all time. But, for a studio that had done only one sequel — "Toy Story 2" — thus far, the production pipeline suddenly began to look very different.

Between sequels, prequels, and unexpected four-quels, Pixar produced a total of seven franchise extensions in the subsequent years. In the same period, their original production was marred by major development woes: "Brave," "The Good Dinosaur," and the ultimately scrapped "Newt" all suffered from backstage tugs-of-war over what kinds of movies they should be. The studio had never made so much money — "Finding Dory," "Incredibles 2," and the "Toy Story" sequels were all massive billion-dollar hits. But something was lost in the shuffle.

Even Pixar's original films began to feel boxed in

The most telling indictment of Pixar's cultural twilight in the 2010s was that even its original films began to feel different. In addition to the aforementioned "Brave" and "Good Dinosaur," which visibly came out the gate as messy, workshopped-to-a-fault concoctions, films like "Coco" and "Onward" demonstrated that the tried-and-true Pixar formula was beginning to yield diminishing returns. "Coco" was a sweet, moving film, but it was so concerned with being agreeable and kid-friendly that it shortchanged its own narrative potential, opting for a simplistic resolution and a cartoony villain instead of the complex familial reckoning it feinted at exploring. "Onward," meanwhile, was a solid, well-made, satisfying helping of Classic Pixar — and it was so painfully generic it barely made a cultural blip.

Popular as they were among families, these were not films that really pushed the medium forward and galvanized culture the way "The Incredibles" or "WALL-E" or "Ratatouille" did, and that was by design. Under Disney, Pixar's express entrepreneurial purpose was to fulfill the role of "universally beloved family animation studio" by continually aiming to please everybody and their mother, be it via sequels or safe rehashes of their past hits' emotional beats. Tellingly, where they used to pride themselves on putting out classic after classic, the Emeryville studio only produced one stone-cold classic in a near-decade: 2015's "Inside Out," a film hailed precisely for its creative boldness and willingness to go to dark, thorny, challenging emotional places.

It turned out that trouble was coming from inside the house

In late 2017, a while after "Onward" had begun development, the tide began to turn for Pixar. First, John Lasseter, once the beloved Hollywood maverick who'd put the studio on the map, was ousted from his CCO position at both Pixar and Disney following a wave of sexual misconduct allegations (via The Hollywood Reporter ). Then, not long after, it came out that Lasseter's alleged behavior might have been part of a larger, corrosive culture of misogyny and boys-club thinking that had been allegedly plaguing Pixar for years (via Variety ).

These developments threw into sharp relief previous events such as the firing of the great Brenda Chapman from her own brainchild "Brave," and Rashida Jones' exit from the writers' room of "Toy Story 4." It became obvious that, more than settling into artistic stagnation, Pixar had become mired in corporatist conformity, with bigwigs protecting themselves and each other at the expense of a healthy and open creative environment, and chasing away any number of fresh new voices in the process.

The ousting of Lasseter and major staff overhaul, with "Up" and "Inside Out" mastermind Pete Docter now at the helm (via Variety ), prompted a long-overdue reckoning with Pixar's standing in the movie industry. Where should Pixar go next? What should a Pixar movie be? The answers provided by subsequent movies said a lot, both about Pixar itself and about the cultural perception of their work.

Turning Red arrives amid a climate of tentative renovation

When Pete Docter was announced as the new head of Pixar in 2018, he was working on what would become 2020's "Soul." As a movie, "Soul" was, in many ways, quite illustrative of the stalemate in which Pixar now found itself. There was a conspicuous tension in it between its auteur 's wilder, more outré instincts and the commercial need to fall in with the perfectionist pop-drama recipe Docter himself helped develop. It felt like a movie that wanted to go all the way off the existential deep end, to go further than any Pixar movie had ever gone, but had to keep returning to a safe, easily digestible realm.

Ultimately, what felt truly new and memorable about "Soul" was not so much its philosophical outreach, but the very thing that would be provided in spades by the following year's "Luca" — personal, small-scale specificity. Thanks to the input of co-director Kemp Powers, moments like the barbershop scene felt like they were coming from an authentic, deeply-felt place, industrial expectations and mandates be damned. "Luca" would later turn out to also be like that, but full-time: Rather than yet another crowd-pleasing white elephant, it was a simple, affectionate exploration of director Enrico Casarosa's own childhood memories of the Italian seaside. As heralds of the post-Lasseter era, both films signaled a momentous shift towards a kind of filmmaker-first philosophy Pixar had never tried on before. And the consequences were immediate — for good and for ill.

Pixar was backed into a corner, and responded in the best way possible

When Casarosa and company had the gall to fashion "Luca" as a different, more personal, less plot-minded version of a Pixar movie, two things happened. First: Even as fellow mid-2021 Disney films like "Cruella," "Black Widow," and "Jungle Cruise" were being given a chance to play in theaters, "Luca" was banished to Disney+, never to see the light of a projector. Second: The critical mainstream, once Pixar's biggest brand-building ally, reacted to the film with apathy bordering on indignation, deeming "Luca" insufficiently ambitious, insufficiently life-changing, too wistfully low-stakes to hold a candle to past hits — in short, the critical mainstream asked for another "Up." What this demonstrated was that the studio's artistic impasse wasn't just a result of corporate conformity — it was also the product of the audience expectations Pixar had backed itself into. 

"Luca" garnered a small following of incredibly passionate fans who connected deeply with its characters, but the Disney+ distribution showed that the Mouse never trusted its commercial potential. Now, with every new Pixar movie fated to be seen as either "too much like old Pixar" or "not enough like old Pixar," the studio was faced with a choice: Commit to the renovation and alienate some nostalgic viewers, thereby losing its standing as de-rigueur Hollywood unanimity, or go back to the routine of sequels and rehashes, thereby risking impending cultural irrelevance.

And this is where the weird, cringey, gyrating antics of "Turning Red" come in.

The only way forward for Pixar is to take real risks again

When Chinese-Canadian animator Domee Shi was poached to make a new feature film for Pixar, all the studio had to go on as evidence of her filmmaking sensibility was "Bao" — a shocking, abrasive, unabashedly personal short film that baffled and confused many with its tale of an overly-attached immigrant mother. The fact that Pixar would choose to bet its chips on Shi, even after the polarized audience reception to "Bao," demonstrates why "Turning Red" is such an important moment in the studio's trajectory: because it's a real risk.

We don't talk often enough about the fact that Pixar's titanic reputation build-up in the 2000s was largely defined by risk-taking — genre subversion, out-there story ideas, comedic and dramatic tones usually reserved for grown-up movies. This is a studio that centered its first film around an unlikable, entitled antihero, hired Albert Brooks to be the lead of its big financial bet while rivals were modeling fish after Will Smith and Angelina Jolie, and spent blockbuster money on a screwball comedy about rats in the kitchen — not to mention, opened a movie with 40 minutes of no dialogue . If the absorption of the Pixar model by the animation industry at large has stripped that model of its danger, then the only way for Pixar to be Pixar again is to up its adventurous ante. And that's precisely what "Turning Red" does, in both form and content.

Turning Red is the Pixar movie we've all been waiting for

For those of us who have long been invested in the evolution of Pixar as a studio and itching to see it live up to the potential it once demonstrated, "Turning Red" is the movie we've been waiting for.

Much like "Luca" and the New York City sections of "Soul," it continues Pixar's tentative modus operandi of embracing singular, lived-in personal visions over broad-appeal architecture, and goes even further than those films by digging into the uncomfortable, unspoken crannies of the personal experience in question. If Brenda Chapman was previously denied the opportunity to finish her own Pixar film the way she wanted to, "Turning Red" finds Domee Shi in total command of her vision, realizing it fully and without compromise. And, if films like "Coco" and "Soul" established an odd pattern of white filmmakers helming stories about marginalized cultures, which were then inhabited and honored largely via dutiful, well-behaved research, "Turning Red" evidences the magic that can happen when a filmmaker of color dives into a complex, no-holds-barred, emotionally involved exploration of her own cultural identity, with all the cunning in-jokes and sharp observations that could never have been written by committee — a testament to Shi as well as her co-screenwriter, acclaimed Korean-American playwright Julia Cho.

In short, it is a bold, impassioned film. And the amazing results of that boldness go to showing why it's vital that Pixar keep taking big swings.

By embracing risk, the movie accesses new echelons of comedy and catharsis

At its heart, "Turning Red" is a movie about a particular human experience. Even with supernatural elements galore, everything in the film goes back to Mei (Rosalie Chiang) — her thoughts, her fears, her self-perception, her new, confusing feelings. The movie doesn't angle for shock for its own sake, but it does give Mei's inner life room to unveil itself in dashing colors, unapologetically, without suppression or embellishment.

On a basic storytelling level, this allows "Turning Red" to be one of the most rewarding and profound coming-of-age films in years, one that faces its protagonist's growing pains head-on and enables her to search deep for the answers she needs. But, considering the specific person Mei is, "Turning Red" also becomes much more than just one girl's story. Unencumbered by efforts to make her vision "palatable" to a mass audience, Domee Shi repeats the magic trick of "Bao" and imbues her film with jolts of piercing truth. From the "cringe" depictions of hormonal crushing and boy-band cult-dom to the girly friendship codes to the loving yet complicated mother-daughter relationship, the understanding Shi shares of what it felt like to be a tween girl, and specifically an Asian-Canadian tween girl in early-2000s Toronto, makes for an experience as painfully, uniquely hilarious as it is disarmingly cathartic. It is a weird, often shocking movie, yes — as weird and shocking as a movie about being 13 and experiencing cultural whiplash should, but so rarely would , be.

The controversy confirms it as a step in the right direction

The critics and commentators who came out in vaguely condescending defense of "Turning Red" have got one thing right: It really is a movie that shouldn't be controversial. In a healthy social environment with a productive relationship to pop culture, movies that grapple honestly with teen experience should be a dime a dozen, animated or otherwise. In a world that didn't stigmatize open dialogue about the realities of puberty as being synonymous with — rather than the most efficient and crucial deterrent to — trauma and exploitation, the mention of periods in a Disney film shouldn't be cause for indignation. Even the claims that the film is "too specific" and "lacks mass appeal" are symptomatic of a deeply closed-minded culture — after all, what makes the Asian-inspired aesthetic sensibility of "Turning Red" any less acceptable than the European-inspired animation and designs of traditional Disney films?

But here's the kicker: Domee Shi knew all that when she set out to make "Turning Red." The movie doesn't just naively ignore all those arbitrary taboos, it actively interrogates them. "Turning Red" is also a film about a social milieu that doesn't do right by girls, by vexed teenagers, by immigrants and their children. It asks why that world should be the way it is, and imagines a better, happier one, for Mei and her mother Ming ( Sandra Oh ) alike. It's no wonder it made people angry. That just confirms it did its job right.

Pixar seems to have learned the right lessons from it

There's no way to know how much of a box office hit "Turning Red" would have been if it had made it to theaters. All we know is that Disney, once again, mistrusted it enough to confine it to Disney+. Pixar could have responded to this, and to the surrounding media circus, by backtracking on the auteur-driven innovation. But, as suggested by their recent promotion of Domee Shi to a leadership position among the mighty "Pixar Braintrust" (via Variety ), conformity no longer seems to be in the cards.

Shi's promotion offers exciting confirmation of a tendency that seemed to be in full swing back in January 2021, when The Hollywood Reporter ran an extensive profile of Pete Docter's work as CCO. Unsurprisingly for the guy who originally encouraged Shi's kooky filmmaking aspirations when she was still a story artist, Docter was revealed to be shepherding Pixar in precisely the direction it should go — resolutely, intrepidly, towards the future. With newly-placed initiatives towards gender parity and racial diversity, the likes of Aphton Corbin getting the chance to develop feature projects, and a renewed philosophical focus on original films and stories, the studio seems all set to embrace the proud newness and uniqueness of "Turning Red" as a shining model of what it can be. And, if future films keep favoring new ideas, marginalized directorial perspectives, and thorny subjects, Pixar might just go back to being the indispensable cinematic atelier it once was.

Turning Red Cast Responds to Controversial Review that Claims the Pixar Film Not Relatable

CinemaBlend was forced to take down the controversial review for Pixar's Turning Red that critiqued the film for its Asian focus.

The cast of Pixar’s upcoming film Turning Red has come out in defense of its themes after a review emerged that claimed the movie wasn't relatable to American audiences. The review in question was featured on CinemaBlend and quickly courted controversy in the comments after publication. Turning Red is the feature directorial debut of one of Pixar’s senior animators and art directors, Domee Shi, and is heavily inspired by her experiences of growing up in a Chinese-Canadian household. Shi has worked as an animator since 2011 and has previously exhibited her story-telling prowess by writing and directing the critically acclaimed Pixar short Bao .There has been a fair bit of hype surrounding the film’s release later this month, but it seems CinemaBlend’s managing director Sean O’Connell felt the film missed its mark as a relatable teen drama. O’Connell criticized the focus on the protagonist’s Asian background by stating it limited the film’s ability to connect with audiences.

"I recognized the humour in the film, but connected with none of it. By rooting Turning Red very specifically in the Asian community of Toronto, the film legitimately feels like it was made for Domee Shi's friends and immediate family members,” O'Connell wrote.

Hundreds of fans were quick to lambast the review, claiming O’Connell was ignoring the cultural experience of the film’s creator. CinemaBlend moved swiftly to take down the controversial review and released an official apology with the editor-in-chief stating: "We failed to properly edit this review, and it never should have gone up." O’Connell also commented on the situation, issuing an apology and thanking the responders for their input.

Turning Red Stars Speak Out

In the wake of the incident, the stars of Turning Red have also weighed in with their public opinion. Rosalie Chiang, who portrays protagonist Meilin (Mei) Lee in the film, categorically denounced any claim that the film is only geared towards Asian audiences in a recent interview. When asked if the film might be a problem for broader audiences, Chiang responded:

"Of course not. This is a coming of age film, everyone goes through this change … I think different people of different cultures are going to go through it differently, but at the end of the day, the core messiness and change is something everyone can relate to."

Co-star Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, who plays Lee's friend Priya, also dismissed the claim by stating that the story was ‘universal’ and that many people will be able ‘to relate to Meilin's story, regardless of whether you are a young Chinese girl from Canada or not.’ Director Shi also offered her takedown of the controversial review by adding that the film: ‘is a love letter to that time of our lives. It's a love letter to puberty. It's a love letter to Toronto.’

Aside from the review in question Turning Red has received an overwhelmingly positive critical response with a 94% 'fresh' rating on review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes. The film is set to premiere on Disney + on March 11th. It was initially slated to have a combined theatrical and streaming debut, but Disney since announced plans to make it a Disney + exclusive due to a lack of significant recovery of family films at the box office since the effects of the global pandemic.

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Civil War Link to Civil War
• Monkey Man Link to Monkey Man
• The First Omen Link to The First Omen

New TV Tonight

• Chucky: Season 3
• Fallout: Season 1
• Mr Bates vs The Post Office: Season 1
• Franklin: Season 1
• Baby Reindeer: Season 1
• Dora: Season 1
• Good Times: Season 1
• Beacon 23: Season 2

Most Popular TV on RT

• Ripley: Season 1
• 3 Body Problem: Season 1
• Parasyte: The Grey: Season 1
• Shōgun: Season 1
• Sugar: Season 1
• A Gentleman in Moscow: Season 1
• We Were the Lucky Ones: Season 1
• The Gentlemen: Season 1
• The Regime: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• Fallout Link to Fallout
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

Best Movies of 2024: Best New Movies to Watch Now

25 Most Popular TV Shows Right Now: What to Watch on Streaming

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Awards Tour

CinemaCon 2024: Day 2 – Universal Showcases Nosferatu , Twisters , Wicked , and More

Fallout First Reviews: A ‘Violent, Fun, Emotional, Epic’ Video Game Adaptation, Critics Say

• Trending on RT
• Play Movie Trivia

Turning Red

2022, Kids & family/Comedy, 1h 40m

What to know

Critics Consensus

Heartwarming, humorous, beautifully animated, and culturally expansive, Turning Red extends Pixar's long list of family-friendly triumphs. Read critic reviews

Audience Says

The movie's message might make some parents uncomfortable, but Turning Red has all the emotion and visual appeal that Pixar fans expect. Read audience reviews

You might also like

Where to watch turning red.

Watch Turning Red with a subscription on Disney+, or buy it on Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango at Home.

Rate And Review

Super Reviewer

Rate this movie

Oof, that was Rotten.

Meh, it passed the time.

It’s good – I’d recommend it.

So Fresh: Absolute Must See!

What did you think of the movie? (optional)

You're almost there! Just confirm how you got your ticket.

Step 2 of 2

How did you buy your ticket?

Let's get your review verified..

AMCTheatres.com or AMC App New

Cinemark Coming Soon

We won’t be able to verify your ticket today, but it’s great to know for the future.

Regal Coming Soon

Theater box office or somewhere else

By opting to have your ticket verified for this movie, you are allowing us to check the email address associated with your Rotten Tomatoes account against an email address associated with a Fandango ticket purchase for the same movie.

You're almost there! Just confirm how you got your ticket.

Turning red videos, turning red   photos.

In "Turning Red", Mei Lee is a confident, dorky thirteen-year-old torn between staying her mother's dutiful daughter and the chaos of adolescence. And as if changes to her interests, relationships, and body weren't enough, whenever she gets too excited (which for a teenager is practically ALWAYS), she "poofs" into a giant red panda!

Rating: PG (Suggestive Content|Language|Thematic Material)

Genre: Kids & family, Comedy, Fantasy, Animation

Original Language: English

Director: Domee Shi

Producer: Lindsey Collins

Writer: Julia Cho , Domee Shi

Release Date (Theaters): Feb 9, 2024  wide

Release Date (Streaming): Mar 11, 2022

Box Office (Gross USA): $1.3M

Runtime: 1h 40m

Distributor: Disney/Pixar

Production Co: Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios

Sound Mix: Dolby Atmos

Aspect Ratio: Flat (1.85:1)

View the collection: Pixar

Cast & Crew

Rosalie Chiang

Meilin, Panda Meilin Voice

Ming, Panda Ming, Young Ming Voice

Miriam Voice

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan

Priya Voice

Tristan Allerick Chen

Tyler Voice

Lori Tan Chinn

Auntie Chen Voice

Mr. Gao Voice

Mr. Kieslowski Voice

Jordan Fisher

Robaire (4*Town) Voice

Jesse (4*Town) Voice

Wai Ching Ho

Addie Chandler

Grayson Villanueva

Lillian Lim

Sherry Cola

Screenwriter

Lindsey Collins

Dan Scanlon

Executive Producer

Pete Docter

Mahyar Abousaeedi

Cinematographer

Jonathan Pytko

Nicholas C. Smith

Film Editor

Ludwig Göransson

Original Music

Production Design

Laura Meyer

Art Director

Natalie Lyon

Kevin Reher

Steve Bloom

News & Interviews for Turning Red

What to Watch This Week: Turning Red , Lisa Frankenstein , and More

Awards Leaderboard: Top Movies of 2022

Oscar Winners 2023: Full List of the 95th Academy Awards Winners

Critic Reviews for Turning Red

Audience reviews for turning red.

Not my favorite Pixar movie, and having never been a young teenage girl there was certainly a large amount I couldn't relate to in it. That said, I love that Pixar is telling stories for this demographic and for the painfully under-told area of mother/daughter stories. And as far as mother/daughter stories go, it's a good one! Do I know what it's like to be in a relationship like that? No, because I am not nor will I ever be either, but again, I like seeing that these stories can be told! But as an adult male, the themes of finding yourself and identity could still resonate with me in a strong way. Plus, that panda is just cute. The characters are all incredibly strong and distinct, and obviously the animation is gorgeous. If anything, I wish the movie was funnier. However, I acknowledge a lot of the jokes were not meant for me, so some people may find this movie hilarious whereas I did not. Still a solid movie though.

Disney is simply the best out there in terms of animation, specifically Pixar films. Yes, many animated films have come out from other studios that deserve higher praise for sure, but the consistency of Disney/Pixar animation has always been unmatched. Turning Red is Pixar's latest release, once again going straight to Disney+ and it's once again another delightful film by the studio. I'll try to keep my bias of having lived in Toronto at one point and still living in the vicinity of it to the side, but seeing a major animation feature taking place there put a huge smile on my face. Here's why I believe Turning Red should not just be seen by its demographic but seen by all ages. Following Mei Lee (Rosalie Chiang) a 13-year-old girl on the brink of puberty, Turning Red is really about the exploration of what happens to your body, but in a much lighter and fun way. After turning 13, she begins to sense her body changing. As soon as she feels any kind of excitement, her body transforms into a giant red panda. Mei's insanely overprotective mother wishes for her to keep this a secret, as it's a family issue that has been dealt with before. This eventually leads to an emotional climax, but at its core, this is a film about Mei and her friends, just trying to live their lives. Where this film really sold me was the friendship between the four main young girls. It felt very authentic to how kids act and talk today. On top of that, making them the outsiders so that the entire school can think Mei is incredible when they finally see the Panda was a great touch. This type of story has been told before, but it's always refreshing to see it done well. This is also one of the more mature subjects that Pixar has tackled in a while, which was very nice to see. Overall, where the film leads is pretty much exactly what I expected and there weren't a tonne of surprises, but the main twist did get me. I also am a huge advocate for a major studio believing that one of their employees deserves a bigger shot. Domee Shi (who also co-wrote the screenplay) directed the short film Bao for Disney a few years ago and it was one of the better ones in years. On top of that, she has been around in and around the studio for many years, working as a storyboard artist on films like Inside Out and Toy Story 4. She has now made one of Pixar's catalogue films and I believe it more than deserves a spot on the list. Turning Red is very straightforward in terms of how everything plays out, but it's still great. It's now streaming on Disney+ and I recommend it.

It's great! The film critic in me always appreciates an animated coming-of-age modern fantasy even if they are formulaic to death and uninspired in story structure. The Asian-Canadian in me on the other hand is truly charmed and grateful of the representation! It really is the extreme attention to detail that makes this film stand out and own it's narrative. Scenes are so carefully constructed with cultural references not only with Chinese and Canadian identifiers but of the early 2000's. The main character knows who she is, is an over-achiever and a young woman who isn't conventionally attractive; all arguably refreshing for the genre. Pixar's masterful animation with spot on keyframes and character expressions isn't anything to shrug off either (but who expects anything less in that regard) Turning Red really is a testament that there's still interesting ways to tell tired stories even if it is just changing details.

It's fair to start to wonder whether Disney has some kind of grudge against Pixar at this time. The last three Pixar movies have been pulled from theatrical release and made exclusively available as part of their streaming war chest with Disney Plus. You can blame COVID for Soul being pulled, and the theatrical market was still recovering by the time Luca was scheduled to be released during the middle of summer 2021, but this didn't stop Disney from releasing both of its own in-house animated efforts to theaters. Both Raya and the Last Dragon and Encanto played in theaters in 2021 and both under-performed at the box-office, which is clearly not close to where it was pre-pandemic. No animated movie has earned over $100 million at the U.S. box-office since COVID, and maybe that's the reason that Turning Red has become the third Pixar movie to go directly to streaming. There are rumors that this trend has been demoralizing for Pixar employees, and explanations by Disney brass that these movies move valuable subscribers to their service, but I guess we'll see when the Buzz Lightyear movie comes out summer 2022. Regardless, Turning Red is a high quality movie that made me feel warm and fuzzy all over. Meilin Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) is a 12-year-old student trying to live her best life in Toronto circa 2002. That means she's one way with her friends and one way with her domineering mother, Ming (Sandra Oh). Mei is an overachieving student, devoted daughter to her family's business caring for a Chinese temple honoring their ancestors and red pandas, and a fangirl in the extreme for the popular boy band, 4-Town (even though there are five members). Mei's mother does not approve of her devotion to this band, or the influence of her friends, and doesn't understand the new person her daughter is turning into. However, Mei also happens to turn into a giant red panda whenever she feels any strong emotion. She has to keep herself in check, which is hard to do with mean students, an embarrassing mother, and the prospect of scrounging up enough money so she and her three besties can see their favorite boy band live. I had to consider what about Turning Red worked for me and what about Luca did not. They're both relatively smaller scale movies about characters who transform into fantastical creatures, who have to hide their secret, deal with parental disapproval, and come of age while pushing their personal boundaries and re-examining who they are and what they felt was important. There are several points of comparison but I found Luca to be broadly lackluster and low in stakes. With Turning Red, I found the movie to be much more engaging and poignant. So what's the difference where one feels shallow and the other feels personal and resonant? I think the difference is that Turning Red's relationships feel more realized and complex. The mother-daughter dynamic is fraught with tension, as trying to live up to the standards of the prior generation is often a surefire way to disappointment. That stuff is relatable, and the drama is potent, but the movie doesn't lose sight of the generational love underneath all the headaches. Both movies are in essence about growing up and finding your identity, relishing different parts of you that stand out as unique, and coming to terms with differences in perception, but I felt with Turning Red that the film embraced these themes, integrated them better, and also built a sturdier foundation of enriched character relationships. The animation is irrepressibly gorgeous but I really enjoyed the added style of Turning Red. It had a more tactile physical presence that reminded me of the Aardman models (Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run). The color balance also emphasized bright colors that popped with subdued hues as a background. I especially enjoyed playful little touches from anime that emphasized the overly dramatic nature of the personal stakes, like when Mei is sweating over whether her mom will find her notebook filled with pictures of a crush that she felt compelled to draw. There's a definite energy to this movie that's missing from plenty of other Pixar movies. It follows the perspective of its heroine, so it's joyfully excitable and goofy at points and definitely over-the-top, like when she's calling out her besties and we flash to a rotating mountain they're all triumphantly scaling. It's adopted her perspective in a way that makes the movie feel more personable, and I appreciated Mei's character even more. Special credit should go to whoever was in charge of designing the fur textures for the red panda. When she fully panda's out, Mei resembles a wonderfully realized version of a Totoro-styled demigod. It was the third act where Turning Red went from amusing to surprisingly poignant for me. The central conflict is between Mei trying to be herself and the version her mother thinks she should be, which is naturally more deferential and devoted to the family at the expense of independence. This isn't the first story to explore the difference between traditional families and their children becoming more influenced by Western pop-culture. It's also not the first story about finding your voice and making a stand, or about parents coming to terms with the realization that their little kid isn't so little any more. That's fine. The supernatural elements are also pretty straightforward to follow and in service of the central relationships and metaphors. It's the personal details that make this movie feel specific to its voice while still being accessible and relatable. It's easy to cringe when Mei's mother shares Mei's private drawings with her fleeting crush. While many of us might not have been diehard fans of a boy band, we all had some phase where we felt more mature, more grown up, and dramatically different because of what this interest meant for us. I found myself battling genuine tears by the end. The end comes down to a conflict between mother and daughter, itself an echo of past conflicts, of overbearing generations being less flexible. It's also ultimately about acceptance, but the idea that the aspects about yourself that you feel embarrassed or insecure about do not need to be expunged from your identity I think is a worthwhile message about growing up. It's not about shedding parts of yourself, killing off things you dislike. It's more about transformation and acceptance of self. Turning Red is a briskly paced comedy with a precise, charismatic lead character letting us in on the pressures of her world and of being a teenage girl in the early twentieth century. It's colorful and frenetic at points but feels completely in keeping with the personality of our plucky protagonist. The combination of puberty and monster transformation has been a ripe area for films especially in the realm of horror. This also might be the horniest Pixar movie to date, and a climactic confrontation involves shaking one's butt, as they kids are wont to do in leisure. It's got the substance I felt was missing with Luca and the simplified and streamlined world building that I felt could have improved Soul. In short, Turning Red isn't top-tier Pixar but it's an irresistible urban fantasy that has plenty of heart and whimsy to enchant audiences no matter the age. Nate's Grade: B+

Movie & TV guides

Play Daily Tomato Movie Trivia

Discover What to Watch

Rotten Tomatoes Podcasts

Things you buy through our links may earn  Vox Media  a commission.

Turning Red Has No Obligations

For all that we measure out recognition in pangs, the experience of seeing some fragment of yourself onscreen is usually assumed to be a positive one. But the rush of familiarity brought on by Domee Shi’s 2018 short, Bao, made me feel bad in ways I struggled to articulate. I welled up from almost the first frame: The eight-minute film, about a Chinese Canadian empty nester channeling her feelings about her estranged son into an anthropomorphic dumpling, is astonishingly efficient at extracting tears. But I resented as much as admired that effectiveness. It’s hard not to begrudge something that shows you what an easy mark you are when it comes to diasporic pain points so classic as to also be clichés — the controlling first-generation mother, the rebellious Westernized kid, the guilt, the sacrifice, the disappointment.

When hashing out that ambivalence with friends, we found ourselves comparing Bao ’s protagonist to our respective mothers (Chinese, Chinese by way of Singapore, Japanese by way of Peru), and then wondering why we needed to, aside from that the film was burdened by representing various firsts — first Pixar production centered on an Asian woman, first Pixar short from a woman director. Maybe it’s that the simplicity of Bao (which, like most of the animation giant’s shorts, is wordless) gave it the feeling of a fable that we were supposed to take ownership of, whether those were its intentions or not. One friend bristled at how terminally second-gen it is to envision an immigrant matriarch so devoted to her son that her life revolves around him, even in his absence. And yet despite her complaints, the startling pivot point in Bao ’s parent-child allegory stuck with her. Months later, she couldn’t help but reach for it when describing an acquaintance’s situation with his own mother: “She ate him! ”

She was talking about the scene in which, in a panic over being left behind by her surrogate child the way she was by her human one, the mother in Bao gobbles down the adorable food baby rather than let him walk away from her. It’s disturbing and it’s the absolute highlight, the moment when it becomes clear that Shi is interested in making something darker and stranger than Subtle Asian Traits: The Animated Movie, and it feels like that seed from which Shi’s new movie was grown. Turning Red is her feature debut, and it’s the best thing Pixar has released in years. While it’s once again about a Chinese Canadian mother and child, it’s neither dutiful in its treatment of them nor loaded down by obligations to meet the impossible expectations of a whole disparate demographic of viewers. Effervescent and ridiculous and grounded in a pastel-shaded Toronto and the nearby throwback details of 2002, it has texture and specificity to spare, and the only person it cares to speak on behalf of is its 13-year-old heroine, Meilin Lee (Rosalie Chiang).

Mei is an unabashed dork who loves Canada; her grade-eight crew of Miriam (Ava Morse), Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), and Abby (Hyein Park); the boy band 4*Town; and her parents Ming (Sandra Oh) and Jin Lee (Orion Lee), though her suffocatingly close relationship with her helicoptering mother is more complicated than she’s willing to acknowledge. She also loves herself, at least until she unexpectedly transforms into a giant red panda one night. She has come into her matrilineal inheritance, a blessing passed down from a distant warrior ancestor that has in modern times become, as Ming carefully phrases it, “an inconvenience.” The panda, which emerges whenever Mei experiences strong emotions, is an unmistakable stand-in for puberty — curvier, hairier, and muskier, though admittedly standard adolescence doesn’t also usually include growing a tail. This new animalistic side arrives alongside an eruption of teen hormones that has her gawping at a Bieber-banged classmate and furiously doodling sketches of herself in a clinch with the local mini-mart clerk.

The beautiful weirdness of Mei’s nascent sexuality — she enjoys drawing her favorite 4*Town member as a merman — makes the inevitable arrival of shame into her life all the more painful. It’s not the panda’s fault. The panda, fluffy and free, represents Mei at her most unfettered, dancing up a storm and posing for pictures and serving as the life of the party once Mei and her friends figure out that they can monetize Mei’s metamorphosis to buy 4*Town tickets. The shame comes from Ming. She had it instilled in her by Mei’s even more iron-willed grandmother, who eventually shows up with a battalion of aunties for a ceremony meant to seal Mei’s inner beast away forever. There’s a core of raw, unresolved generational hurt in Turning Red , in the way that Mei feels trapped by her mother’s hopes and dreams for her, and the way that Ming harbors tamped-down resentment about never feeling good enough for her own mother, a pattern she couldn’t help repeating. But the movie isn’t interested in staging a battle in which Eastern values are neatly pitted against Western permissiveness.

What Turning Red wants for its characters is only to carve out a space in which being a good daughter doesn’t require an erasure of self. In doing that, it allows Ming — hovering outside Mei’s school, waiting to watch Mandarin-language dramas with her at night — to be not some Tiger Mom incarnate, but a woman who has made her child her best friend and who is terrified of being lonely when that child embarks on a life of her own. Representation can be an awfully flimsy thing to invest in, as Pixar’s parent company, Disney, has handily demonstrated in funding the backers of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill while touting its “diverse stories” as being “more powerful than any tweet or lobbying effort.” The thrill of Turning Red is the way its characters feel neither typecast nor actively at war with type. They simply are a goofball kid and a fearsome but fearful adult trying to figure out how their relationship will grow with time rather than calcify into something brittle and broken.

More Movie Reviews

• Monkey Man Is a Solid Action Thriller, But It Clearly Wants to Be More
• Behold, an Actually Good Omen Movie
• With The Old Oak , Ken Loach Goes Out on a Hopeful Note
• vulture homepage lede
• movie review
• turning red

Most Viewed Stories

• Cinematrix No. 34: April 11, 2024
• Fallout Series-Premiere Recap: Orange Colored Sky
• Mark Knopfler on the Most Patient and Wistful Music of His Career
• Shōgun Recap: A Funeral in Edo
• Vanderpump Rules Recap: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Breakup

Editor’s Picks

Most Popular

What is your email.

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

• Lower case letters (a-z)
• Upper case letters (A-Z)
• Numbers (0-9)
• Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

• Backchannel
• Newsletters
• WIRED Insider
• WIRED Consulting

Amit Katwala

Turning Red Doesn’t Follow Pixar’s Rules. Good 

In 2017, director Domee Shi had just finished Bao , a Pixar short in which a woman’s bao bun lunch comes to life and grows from an adorable dumpling into a surly steamed-up teenager. It was an allegory for motherhood. Following the film’s warm reception (it eventually won the Oscar for Best Animated Short), her Pixar colleagues asked her to pitch ideas for a feature. She spent that summer working up three concepts—all coming-of-age stories about teenage girls that leaned heavily on her experiences growing up in a Chinese Canadian family in Toronto.

Ultimately, she made Turning Red, the story of Meilin Lee, a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl growing up in Toronto in the early 2000s who wakes up one day to discover that she now transforms into a magical giant red panda whenever she gets angry or upset. It’s an allegory for puberty—and one of the most personal movies Pixar has ever made.

The studio’s moviemaking process is now part of cinematic lore. Its rules of storytelling ( there are 22 ) are handed down in earnest screenwriting blogs like the Ten Commandments. In its early days, Pixar was notorious for polishing and tinkering and crafting—boiling a story down to its very essence, trying to speak to universal themes like love and loss and family. Each film got hashed out by Pixar’s “ brain trust ”—John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Brad Bird, and others—and the results snagged the studio huge hits and dozens of awards.

But those rules also meant a lot of movies looked a lot different from their original ideas. Up started life as a film about a pair of alien princes living in a floating city; A Bug’s Life was completely rewritten nine months before its release. That’s not really how Shi works. “There was no clear-cut schedule or any structure to pitching these ideas, you can kind of go at your own pace,” she says. “For me, I just want to go fast because my worst fear is to overthink and overdo and overpolish something until it loses all of its uniqueness.”

So with Turning Red, Shi broke some rules. The movie, which lands on Disney+ on Friday, is largely faithful to her initial pitch—there are scenes from her early storyboards that now exist in much the same form. There’s a moment, for instance, where Meilin’s mother goes to her daughter’s school to spy on her, peering from behind a tree with binoculars, to Meilin’s total mortification. “You could tell some of these were coming from very personal experiences from Domee, and that’s always a drug when you hear a pitch,” says producer Lindsey Collins. “That’s not something you get out of the gate normally.”

Lauren Goode

Karen Williams

William Turton

This focus on personal experiences has become something of a trend in Pixar’s recent works. Luca , which came out last year, was heavily influenced by director Enrico Casarosa’s own childhood—the impossible blues of summers on the Italian coast, the freedom and joy of exploration. Onward , although set in an urban fantasy world, was inspired by director Dan Scanlon hearing an audio clip of his father, who passed away when he was a child.

Personal experiences are also being reflected in the worlds the studio is crafting. Its early movies could be set anywhere: Toy Story and its sequels take place in the nebulous Tri-Counties Area, a vague approximation of Middle America with suburban streets and shopping malls and space-themed pizza arcades. Inside Out is about a girl whose family moves from Minnesota (home of director Pete Docter) to San Francisco—but if you swap Riley’s love of hockey out for something else, there’s little rooting the story to those places.

But 2020’s Soul , about a failing jazz musician who finds himself unwillingly in the afterlife, has New York woven throughout. Likewise, Turning Red is so linked to Shi’s life experiences that setting it anywhere but her hometown would have made it a completely different story. “I feel like Toronto and Vancouver are always pretending to be other, American cities in movies,” she says, referring to their popularity as shooting locations for Hollywood blockbusters. Setting the movie in a real place also counterbalances Shi’s anime- and manga-influenced animation style. That specificity extends to the time period of the movie—in this case, 2002. Meilin and her friends nurture Tamagotchis and obsess over 4*Town, a fictional boy band with some very catchy songs (written for the movie by Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas).

“We have the ability now to do so much more that we’re not afraid of grounding it in a real place,” Collins says, referring to the way improvements in technology have given Pixar’s animators more options. Shi remembers choosing skin swatches for characters with degrees of realism ranging from being able to see every pore to “plastic doll.” The makers of Toy Story really only had the second option in their toolkit in the mid-1990s. From Turning Red ’s animation style (“chunky but cute”) to its use of color (“pastel and bright and fresh”), the animators were able to bring the sensibilities of a 13-year-old girl to the forefront. “The goal wasn’t just to stylize it for the sake of stylization,” Collins says. “Since our character is a 13-year-old Asian girl, it was important for us to put that lens on when we were designing the world.”

After a string of hits, Pixar has the freedom to transition away from making movies “by dads, for dads,” as one Twitter commentator put it , and let a more diverse set of characters and creators take the wheel. The appeal of the studio’s latest crop of films is still broad; they just find their relatability in new places. “Even from the very first pitch,” Shi says, “it was important to me to latch onto, ‘What is this universal thing that we’re telling with this culturally specific paintbrush?’” She adds, “For Turning Red it’s this experience of growing up, of suddenly waking up one day and realizing you grew a couple of feet, you’re covered in body hair, and you’re hungry all the time. I think most people have an experience like that where they are just like an alien in their body.”  Predictably, some reviewers didn’t get it—after movies about robots and talking cars and clown fish, they felt a story about a 13-year-old Chinese girl was too unrelatable, too “narrow” and “limiting in scope.” But ultimately, the whole point of cinema is to transport you into the head of someone you’ve never met and teach you something about yourself in the process.  Pixar’s move toward more specific stories may break some of its award-winning rules, but the movies that result capture both the personal and the profound. Shi reflects on one of the first images she drew for her pitch—Meilin praying to her ancestors for a bigger cup size—something specific to a 13-year-old girl, sure, but that also speaks to wider issues around belonging and the dual lives so many of us have to live. “That really captured Mei and the movie,” she says. “That is the movie, it’s just this girl struggling with trying to survive puberty and change, but also trying to juggle these two worlds that she was born into.”

• 📩 The latest on tech, science, and more: Get our newsletters !
• They were “calling to help.” Then they stole thousands
• The pandemic tanked rates of childhood vaccination
• The most intriguing launches at MWC 2022
• Elden Ring is the game of the year
• Today's startups are flush with cash—and frugal
• 👁️ Explore AI like never before with our new database
• 🎧 Things not sounding right? Check out our favorite wireless headphones , soundbars , and Bluetooth speakers

Angela Watercutter

Jennifer M. Wood

Jason Parham

Eric Ravenscraft

Screen Rant

Why turning red's reviews are so positive.

Pixar's latest movie, Turning Red, will be released on Disney+ on March 11 and it's already getting a lot of praise for its animation, story, & more.

Turning Red is Pixar ’s latest movie, and unsurprisingly, it’s already getting positive reviews from critics. Pixar continues to be a powerhouse in the world of animation and keeps on treating the audience to at least one movie per year, each one with a different setting exploring a different culture or world, but all with the studio’s signature moral lesson at the end and with a good dose of humor. In 2022, Pixar will bring two very different movies for the audience to enjoy, and the first one is Turning Red .

Directed by Domee Shi, Turning Red takes viewers to Canada to meet Meilin "Mei" Lee (Rosalie Chiang), a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian student who one day discovers that whenever she gets too excited or stressed, she turns into a giant red panda, but she can turn back if she becomes calm. This “condition” turns out to be linked to her ancestors, who have a shared history with the species as a family curse, but the curse can be contained by performing a special ritual on one specific night… which to Mei’s luck, coincides with a concert of her favorite boy band. All of this, of course, as she deals with everything puberty throws her way.

Related: Where To Find Luca’s Turning Red Pixar Easter Egg

Turning Red was originally planned to be released in theaters, but as the coronavirus pandemic evolved and the Omicron variant appeared, Pixar and Disney changed their plans and Turning Red was sent directly to Disney+ (though it will be released in theaters in countries where Disney+ isn’t available). At the time of writing, Turning Red holds a 94% score on Rotten Tomatoes , with critics praising the story, animation, Shi’s direction, and its approach to a different culture. 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, “Turning Red” (which like the previous two Pixar releases is streaming only; it debuts Friday on Disney+) is one of the studio’s most specifically drawn films.”

“For decades, Disney sold little girls polished princess fantasies to sell toys. But in that, they also sold an idea of girlhood that was woefully limiting. Here, the fantasy has an element of body horror but is treated with a jocular touch that makes Turning Red an absolute blast. In giving us a protagonist who is confident, kooky, but also a mess, Disney and Pixar gave kids a role model who rejects convention and is better for it — and better for us.”

“Shi has transformed the studio's typical visual sensibility to incorporate the influence of 2D anime, where the facial expressions of characters are pushed to the extreme, and backdrops can change entirely alongside a character's emotions. Pixar's creative team have never been silent about their love for anime (the studio's last film, "Luca", was set in a fictional town named after Hayao Miyazaki's "Porco Rosso"), but the genre's visual sensibility has seldom influenced the look of one of their movies quite like this. [...] It's more of a hyper-kinetic feast for the senses than we've come to expect from Pixar, and more than any of their movies in recent years, immediately invites repeat viewings just to pore over every single detail.”

“The Ludwig Göransson score thrums and flutters like only a Ludwig score can. And the distinct visual style — incorporating anime speed-lines, face-filter emoji reactions, and a defiantly tween-girl pastel-pink sparkly sheen — means it looks unlike anything the studio has done before. Turning Red not only keeps Mei’s experiences and emotions at the heart of the story; the entire film feels like it’s filtered through her personality: ebullient and energetic and irresistible.”

“Turning Red is a film that takes what appears to be a familiar tale of culture clash under the backdrop of a coming-of-age story of self-discovery and breathes new life into it. With literal magic, Turning Red leans into the creative possibilities that come with the story's time period and themes. The red panda element to the story gives Turning Red its core premise but it's the cast's naturally buoyant energy that makes the film stand a cut above the rest.”

Turning Red follows the trademark computer-animated style of Pixar movies, but its anime influences are what are making it stand out from the rest, and they also gave the creative team more freedom to better express Mei’s emotions and struggles through her more exaggerated facial expressions and even the colorful backgrounds. Although these details have been pointed out as some of the biggest strengths of the movie, along with the story itself and how it addresses puberty, its use of culture, and Ludwig Göransson’s score, there are some critics that aren’t fully on board with what Turning Red has to offer, with some finding that it continues some of Pixar’s worst recent trends and doesn’t bring anything new. Here’s what some of the negative reviews and opinions of Turning Red are saying:

In Review Online :

“The animation style is an unthinking hodgepodge of comic book affectation and broadly “Asian” nods, its aesthetic design primarily cribbing from anime, but throwing in some Kaiju iconography for good measure. The skill still impresses, even as its conception is haphazard at best and borderline offensive at worst, but ultimately not much worth lineating given how derivative it all is. [...] Turning Red is not only a disappointment in its own right, though, but is as blunt an expression of post-2009 Pixar’s worst tendencies as we’ve yet seen: uninspired, insipid, and increasingly reliant on winking referentialism to compensate for lacking originality.”

The Guardian :

“It’s also, perhaps, a self-aware demotion for another under-par film, one that’s not without merits and the occasional biggish swing, but a far far cry from the partnership’s wildly inventive heyday. What once felt organic has come to feel far too over-calculated from the wacky but-wait-what-if set-up to the but-wait-it’s-actually-really-about allegory and coming out less than a year after Luca, which had a similar transformation narrative, Turning Red feels like factory line Pixar.”

Pixar has a well-established formula that even though it’s repetitive, most movies manage to give it a fresh twist thanks to their stories and characters, but it’s still going to be a talked-about point about Pixar’s movies . Turning Red is no exception, and it’s not surprising that it has been mostly well-received but it has also been divisive, as it’s a new visual style for the studio and addresses more serious and at times complex themes that some viewers might not want to watch in a Pixar movie, but are ultimately necessary for the studio to be more inclusive and diverse and ensure that viewers have at least one movie or character they can relate to.

Next: Will Lightyear Also Release On Disney+ Since Turning Red Is?

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Turning Red review – Pixar’s fizzing journey through female adolescence

A 13-year-old girl’s emotions take the form of a large red panda in this uplifting tale of menstruation, friendship and embracing change

T hirteen-year-old Mei Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) is just like any other high-achieving dork from a loving, slightly smothering Chinese-Canadian family. Then her hormones kick in. Like many kids at this pivotal moment, her emotions take on a life of their own. What sets Mei Lee apart is the fact that her emotions also take on a form of their own: at moments of extreme excitement (and since Mei Lee is 13, extreme excitement is the default setting), she turns into a large red panda.

Pixar’s latest, and the first feature from Domee Shi (director of the terrific short film Bao , about a sentient dumpling), Turning Red is a fizzing, squealing adolescent explosion of a movie that nails a fundamental truth about growing up. Puberty may be something that pretty much everyone has to endure, but at the time it feels like a uniquely mortifying and personal experience.

What doesn’t help Mei Lee is that, at the very moment her body takes on a mind of its own, her mother seems to lose hers. Over-protective Ming (Sandra Oh) pursues her daughter to school with armfuls of sanitary pads. And this is the gently radical core of this appealing animation: it’s that vanishingly rare thing – a piece of pop culture that not only addresses menstruation, but does so in a constructive manner.

The message is one of female friendship, embracing change and cuddling your inner panda, of working through mother-daughter friction. Here, there’s a kinship with Pixar’s Brave , but for the most part Shi visually references Japanese anime, in particular the uplifting, female-led storytelling of Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata.

• Animation in film
• The Observer
• Family films
• Young people

More on this story

Disney+ loses 4m subscribers amid exodus in Indian market

Disney introduces first plus-size heroine in animated short Reflect

Can a ‘dark’ Pinocchio reignite Disney’s live-action remake strand?

Disney accused of removing gay content from Pixar films

Best of Pixar: our writers’ favourite movies from Toy Story to Turning Red

To infinity and bewilderment: what on earth has happened to Buzz Lightyear?

Lightyear’s anti-gay critics can buzz off, says Chris Evans

We are all losers in the ‘woke v racist’ Little Mermaid culture war

Saudi Arabia bans Pixar’s Lightyear over same-sex kiss

Comments (…), most viewed.