turning red movie review controversy

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Pixar’s Turning Red is an unlikely culture war battleground

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

by Aja Romano

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:

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.

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.

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.

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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.

'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 .

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 :

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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.

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'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.

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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.

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

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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. 

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"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

Senior Writer

Jackson Weaver is a reporter and film critic for CBC's entertainment news team in Toronto. You can reach him at [email protected].

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With files from Eli Glasner

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

Ryan lattanzio, deputy editor, film.

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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

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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.

• Turning Red (2022)

Turning Red

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.

• 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
• Ludwig Göransson
• Nicholas C. Smith
• Steve Bloom

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How Did Pixar’s Delightful ‘Turning Red’ Become the Target of Sexist, Racist Controversy?

Pixar’s new film is charming, nostalgic, and, with Chinese-Canadian lead character Mei, a watershed moment for representation. Naturally, the internet’s toxic trolls have arrived.

Fletcher Peters

Entertainment Reporter

Disney/Pixar

In the world’s latest attempt to ruin all fun, Turning Red has somehow become one of the most controversial films of 2022. Domee Shi ’s new coming-of-age film, which follows a young girl cursed with transforming into a giant panda, has the inquisitive delightfulness of Lady Bird paired with the flawlessness (and completely family-friendly image) of Pixar . And yet, here we are, wading through discourse yet again to protect poor Meilin Lee (Rosalie Chiang), part-time spunky middle schooler, part-time fluffy red beast, from people who can’t manage to have a good time—or, in fact, understand the purpose behind the movie in the first place.

The new animated movie has faced an abundance of controversies. Like young girls justifying their love for Twilight or Justin Bieber, fans of Turning Red face the wrath of angry parents and confused men taking their spite to Rotten Tomatoes over a few scenes in the film. This—shaming energetic teenage girls for their passions—is precisely what Turning Red proves unhealthy.

In simple terms, Turning Red is a near-perfect film.

Controlled by her mother (Sandra Oh) and beloved by her trio of friends, Mei is a delightfully perky middle school girl with perfect grades, dedication to her family, and an obsession with gyrating boy bands. When her desire for boys becomes too strong to handle, she spirals out of control—and into a giant red panda. This isn’t uncommon, though: it’s a tradition the Lee family has faced for centuries; all Mei has to do is harness the beast until she can perform a ritual to expel it.

Mei’s cheery personality is paired with a quick moving, smart plot jam-packed with 2000’s nostalgia, sizzling bowls of delectable food ladled into every scene, and meticulous attention to detail (for example, something I just found today: Mei’s pal Priya is obsessed with vampires, and mimics them in nearly every scene of the film). It steers away from clichés, marching to the beat of its own drum. There’s even a level of Spinal Tap greatness in the form of the film’s fake boy band, 4Town, with buoyant tunes from Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell .

How did this delight face such a hard time? Though not unique to Turning Red , the first major dilemma was Disney’s decision to send this gold mine straight to streaming. Soul and Luca have fallen to this tactic as well, a decision that has resulted in rightful backlash from Pixar workers. Theaters should be buzzing with thrilled children—this is a kids’ movie parents actually should like, too—candy in hand, ready for the time of their lives. (That’s not to say the film didn’t deserve a simultaneous streaming release, especially since kids under five still can’t get vaccinated.)

When first reviews started pouring in for the film, however, things seemed to be turning around. The movie, which now stands at a fantastic 95 percent “fresh” rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, was praised for a fresh take on puberty, stellar voice acting, and signature Pixar imagination. But that didn’t stop a few critics from shaming the movie for being “exhausting,” for creating a character that’s “irritatingly obnoxious,” and over its scenes featuring periods, which, god forbid, may prompt questions from confused children.

A since-deleted, terribly negative review hailed from CinemaBlend . “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,” the review wrote, “but also, a tad limiting in its scope.” The reviewer was dragged all over social media for the insensitive, racist undertones of his statements, and later, the piece was deleted. But another review left up by the Chicago Sun-Times denounces Turning Red ’s discussions about puberty, saying that kiddos “might have questions.” Uh, hello: that’s the point. If your kid is going to turn into a giant panda (or, more likely, go through any other bodily changes), they need to be ready.

“Some Pixar films are made for universal audiences,” the CinemaBlend review continued. “ Turning Red is not.” If Turning Red isn’t universal, neither are the other films about family ( The Incredibles , Finding Nemo ), growing up ( Inside Out , Toy Story 3 ) or friendship ( Monsters Inc. ). The last three Pixar films have featured a plot in which a human becomes an animal— Soul , Luca , and now Turning Red— which, at least to me, doesn’t feel universal in the slightest. Why anyone would shame Turning Red for this fact is bonkers. Have you ever been a rat in Paris teaching a dope how to cook?

Turning Red is a watershed moment for representation, and there’s no underselling what it’s meant for young girls to finally see someone who looks like them in a movie like this. To interpret a moment like that as liability to the film’s appeal reveals a grotesque lack of imagination, generosity, and empathy from a person whose demographic, for so long, was the only one represented.

What makes matters worse is how universal Turning Red actually is, minus the whole “transforming into a giant red panda” bit. Everyone goes through some form of puberty. To get through her puberty and family drama, Mei turns to her best friends, who she dreams up every time she anticipates a panda attack. Perhaps having friends could become a more universal concept with the folks denigrating this movie.

And then there’s the case of the film’s splotchy audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and pushback from parents online, thanks to Mei’s crushes on boys and her mother’s presentation of menstrual pads. One review bashes the film for including “adult topics like puberty and menstruation.” Another says that Turning Red is “not a movie for a kid” because the film “glorifies disobedience.” This is exactly the type of absurd helicopter parenting that forces kids into defiance—for chrissakes, here we are again, this is the exact plot of Turning Red .

Teenage girls are often shamed for their girlish desires, and it appears Turning Red is no stranger to this phenomenon. If a young woman’s passion is not childish or cheesy, it is in turn sexual. Mei and her friends’ infatuation with 4Town is silly, unrelatable, but when she pines after real boys, her love darkens into something that’s deemed forbidden, too sexual in nature. Mei’s vibrant spunk and overall thoughtfulness make her one of Pixar’s best characters yet. Those who write her off because she’s, what, a harmless teenage girl? They’re just missing out on the party.

And don’t even get us started on the sexism, misogyny, and retrograde gender panic behind the backlash to the film’s acknowledgment of a fact of life: girls have periods. That people are triggered to the point of review bombing—flooding sites with negative scores and reviews— Turning Red is juvenile. It is the year 2022, and tampons are still taboo? Come on .

Turning Red should have Finding Nemo levels of acclaim. Shi’s masterpiece should’ve raked in a boatload of money at the box office, sold millions of giant red pandas to little girls just like Mei, and inspired a full-blown 4Town album. But for some reason (see: racism, sexism, etc.), folks are stuck in their irate red panda state over this movie. Take some notes from Mei and cool it, guys!

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast  here .

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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’”.

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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 .

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‘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

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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.

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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.

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‘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.

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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.

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• Entertainment
• Pixar’s Turning Red captures the wonder and horror of being a teen in 2002

Pixar’s latest feature is another stunner

By Charles Pulliam-Moore , a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.

Share this story

Pixar’s Turning Red, from director Domee Shi, may be Disney’s latest animated feature aimed at kids. But any adult over the age of 30 or so needs to understand that the movie is also a kind of one-way time machine back to the halcyon days of 2002 when burning CDs was the easiest way to share music with your best friends. Though Turning Red ’s rooted in a moment from our past, its story about a young girl trying to break free of her lovingly-overbearing family is both timeless and a surprising testament to its studio growing up in some very important ways.

Turning Red’ s central character Meilin Lee (Rosalie Chiang) is the sort of 13-year-old girl that most parents of grade eights (the movie is unabashedly Canadian to wonderful effect) dream of. Meilin stays on top of her grades, dives into extracurricular activities, loves her trio of BFFs, and has nothing but the utmost respect for her laidback father, Jin (Orion Lee) and her somewhat domineering mother, Ming (Sandra Oh). Meilin’s more than accustomed to juggling her responsibilities and meeting her parents’ expectations, but after years of playing the role of an extremely dutiful daughter, she reaches her breaking point when Ming humiliates her so thoroughly that it almost feels like mother is trying to destroy her social life. But just as Meilin resigns herself to a death by way of embarrassment, life throws her for a loop when she spontaneously transforms into a massive red panda in an explosion of pink smoke — a magical power that acts as a defense mechanism throughout the movie.

Compared to some of Pixar’s other films about people fighting for their lives or trying to save their worlds from destruction, Turning Red ’s story’s far more intimate and grounded as it follows Meilin on her journey to figure out what her panda form is and how to control it. Obviously, Meilin’s whole turning into a panda thing is a concern and something that she fights to keep secret from her friends Miriam (Ava Morse), Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), and Abby (Hyein Park). But between Meilin also starting to realize that crushes on boys are going to be a thing for her, and learning that her all-time favorite boy band 4*Town are on their way to Toronto, her panda’s just one of the many things on her plate, and not always the one that’s at the front of her mind.

Meilin’s panda is just one of the many things on her plate

What jumps out most immediately about Turning Red in its first few scenes is how refreshingly comfortable the movie is shifting between aesthetic modes for comedic effect. Though Turning Red generally looks and feels like a bright and busy Pixar feature, the movie’s peppered with beats and gags more commonly found in two-dimensional anime and manga that all speak to Meilin’s own sensibilities as a budding artist. 

Of the many challenges Meilin faces, her mother’s inability to recognize the things that fulfill her emotionally is the biggest, and what Turning Red ’s most interested in exploring. Turning Red ’s magical elements are important to its story, but they’re secondary to its focus on how stifling and oppressive a parent’s love for their child can become when it’s only expressed through control and a desire to shelter them from the outside world. 

Main character though Meilin may be, Oh frequently luxuriates in the spotlight with a performance that will alarm anyone who’s ever wanted to vanish while watching their parents cause a scene in public. Chiang’s Meilin is very much your prototypical Pixar protagonist, but what makes her feel like such a breath of fresh air coming from the studio is the way Turning Red acknowledges and has fun with a number of the specific realities of being a hormonal teenager. 

In the same way that turning into a humongous panda becomes Meilin’s own personal hell, the prospect of breathing the same air as 4*Town’s five members — Robaire (Jordan Fisher), Aaron Z. (Josh Levi), Aaron T. (Topher Ngo), Jesse (Finneas O’Connell), and Tae Young (Grayson Villanueva) — is her and her friends’ idea of heaven. The movie’s handful of jokes about the girls’ obsession with boys work to remind you that Turning Red is a coming-of-age story about a young girl discovering what kind of person she’s growing up to become. But Turning Red also takes a somewhat more serious, though still lighthearted, turn in its third act with a series of plot points that put an interesting twist on the all-too-common experience of children being ostracized for bringing their “ethnic” cultures to school.

Though it would be more than fair to count Turning Red among the growing number of children’s movies like Encanto broaching the concept of generational trauma, it feels distinct in that the trauma at hand isn’t exactly the point of the movie. It’s just one element of Meilin’s magically complicated life. It’s a life that, among other things, involves her emotions becoming so powerful that they give rise to a new physical form, an idea that becomes increasingly relatable the more you let the movie and its unfortunately addictive soundtrack wash over you.

Turning Red also stars Wai Ching Ho, Tristan Allerick Chen, and Addison Chandler. The movie begins streaming on Disney+ on March 11th.

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Pixar’s ‘turning red’: film review.

A plucky 13-year-old is torn between remaining a dutiful daughter and liberating her wild side when heightened emotions suddenly start transforming her into a giant red panda.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Until I saw Turning Red , I had no idea how much I needed the cute overload of a giant red panda scampering over the rooftops of downtown Toronto or stomping through the streets in what seems an homage to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters . OK, sorry, massive spoiler, but I didn’t specify which giant red panda. And even if you know what’s coming, the magic of this rollicking metaphor for the rollercoaster of change that is puberty is all in the telling. Director Domee Shi, who brought a dumpling to life in her Oscar-winning short, Bao , graduates to features with flying colors — literally — in this charmer from Pixar .

Even before taking into account the invigorating imagination of the fast-paced story, which Shi co-wrote with playwright Julia Cho, there are a number of disarming factors here.

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Release date : Friday, March 11 Cast : Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Ava Morse, Hyein Park, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Orion Lee, Wai Ching Ho Director : Domee Shi Screenwriters : Julia Cho, Domee Shi

First, it’s a delight to see Toronto playing itself and not standing in for some U.S. location with fewer tax breaks. Second, pinning a mix of tradition and fantasy to the city’s bustling Chinatown community gives the film cultural specificity, while Shi’s light touch provides universal appeal in themes of friendship, the push-pull of complex mother-daughter relationships and the early-adolescent struggle to seize independence and figure out what kind of person you want to be. Oh, and there’s also a boy band called 4*Town, with amusingly cheesy pastiche songs written by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell.

“Don’t hold back” is a message all of us have needed to hear at some point, along with the reassurance that it can be healthier to make room for the messy, complicated sides of our personalities, rather than suppress them. Young women whose bodies are changing as fast as their tastes and desires perhaps need to hear this more than anyone. And while girls around that transitional age no doubt will be the core audience for this Disney+ premiere, the infectious humor, the crazy energy, the inventive visuals and heartwarming wisdom all should broaden the appeal.

Meilin Lee (Rosalie Chiang) is a good daughter with a close relationship to her kind but controlling mother Ming ( Sandra Oh ) and easygoing father Jin (Orion Lee). Mei to her besties, Miriam (Ava Morse), Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and Abby (Hyein Park), and MeiMei to her family, she’s 13 and likes to think of herself as a feisty free spirit. But in truth, she’s a straight-A, over-achieving dork who’s usually too busy cleaning the ancestral family temple and helping out on her Mom’s guided tours to kick back at karaoke with her friends.

About that temple: It honors not just the gods but specifically, the family’s ancestors, chief among them the powerful matriarchal figure Sun Yee, a scholar, poet, warrior and defender of animals who had a special connection to the red panda. The Lees believe that mystical creature has blessed their family with good fortune and prosperity.

When hyper-vigilant Ming discovers her daughter’s crush on a boy, she humiliates Mei in front of her peers, sparking a nightmare in which Sun Yee’s magic seeps into the 21st century girl’s reality. Mei wakes in the morning and sees not her own sweet, bespectacled face in the bathroom mirror but a towering red panda. Understandably, she freaks, attempting to hide the disturbing development from her parents. In a funny gag that’s notably candid for a Pixar kids’ film, Ming assumes her daughter has gotten her first period. But strangely, the far more startling revelation of Mei’s physical transformation seems to phase her mother much less.

While the power passed down by Sun Yee to generations of daughters is a gift that might have been useful on battlefields of old, it’s more of an encumbrance at a Toronto middle school in 2002, when the film is set. Or is it? Mei learns to control the emergence of her outsize fiery furball alter ego by keeping a lid on her emotions, drawing on the Zen calm she gets from being around her friends. But Ming has other ideas, deeming it too dangerous for her child to co-exist with the red panda and preparing for a temple ritual that will contain the beast on the night of the next red moon.

Co-writers Shi and Cho strike an effervescent balance between folkloric fantasy and contemporary teen-movie tropes as Mei and her friends discover that a giant red panda can be an asset. That’s exactly what happens when news drops that 4*Town will be playing a concert at the Toronto SkyDome and they need to raise cash for four $200 tickets. But conflicting dates and Mei’s increasingly mixed feelings about permanently sequestering her wild side cause friction, especially once her fiercely regal Grandma (Wai Ching Ho) arrives from Florida with a gaggle of aunties to take charge.

The tangle of mother-daughter relationships — the urge for approval butting up against the hunger for emancipation — is explored across three generations, with anxiety fueled by Ming’s hairy history with her own formidable panda. The spiky arguments between Mei and her mother are humorously offset by the mellow response to the panda crisis of her dad, a gentle soul who tells his daughter: “Red is a lucky color.”

Suspense is built into the storytelling through the knowledge that each time the panda is unleashed it gets stronger, making it less likely that the ritual will succeed and leaving Mei bound to the creature forever. But there’s also Mei’s internal conflict of learning to lose control now and then, just like any teenager, while struggling with her deep-rooted fear of disappointing her mother. And in keeping with the life-or-death importance given to most things in a 13-year-old’s world, the thought of having to miss the 4*Town concert for these dreamy-eyed superfans is unendurable.

There’s a distinct feeling throughout that this material is very personal to Shi, obviously not in terms of pandafication but perhaps of teen years spent navigating the line between honoring her family and exploring her freedom, as well as the foibles of mothers with high expectations. Sparky newcomer Chiang tackles the growing pains with irrepressible spirit, and it’s a joy to see MeiMei stand up to Ming: “My panda, my choice, Mom.”

But this is also a loving portrait of teen friendship. Mei’s pals’ instant acceptance of her transformation yields some exhilarating bonding moments — not to mention a fun “Bootylicious” montage — and shifts their standing in the school hierarchy.

The distinctive personalities of all the girls are nicely captured, not just in the facial and physical characteristics but also in droll voice work from Morse, Ramakrishnan and Park, a story artist at Pixar who worked on Bao , Toy Story 4 and Soul . Without making a big deal of it, the movie warmly celebrates these racially diverse characters and the multicultural city they live in, rendered in pretty pastel backgrounds.

The invaluable Oh brings her quick-witted delivery to the key adult role of Ming, leaning into the control freak but tempering the character’s brittle edges with genuine love and concern for her only child Mei’s wellbeing. That said, the emergence of her ferocious side in the climactic action is a riot.

That of course takes place at the SkyDome, where Ludwig Göransson’s score — mixing bouncy, big-synth pop with traditional Chinese music — is interwoven with infernally catchy 4*Town gems titled “U Know What’s Up,” “Nobody Like U” and “1 True Love” (sample lyrics: “Heavy rain on a Saturday / When you said my name in the saddest way”). Co-songwriter O’Connell also provides the sugary-sweet tight harmonies with Jordan Fisher, Topher Ngo, Grayson Villanueva and Josh Levi. Yes, there are five of them despite being called 4*Town, as Ming pedantically points out.

The visual style shows Shi’s influences ranging from anime to Miyazaki to Chinese watercolors, particularly in gorgeous dream sequences and in the other-worldly bamboo glade that Sun Yee’s spirit inhabits. (That realm prompts a touching meeting of Mei with her mother as a teen, whimsically recalling Petite Maman .) But the look predominantly is shaped by the vibrant color palette and sparkle of a teen girl’s eye view. Turning Red is original, funny and tender, an affectionate reminder that adolescence is a time of life not easily tamed, and sometimes the animal inside us demands release.

Full credits

Production company: Pixar Animation Studios Distribution: Disney+ Cast: Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Ava Morse, Hyein Park, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Orion Lee, Wai Ching Ho, Tristan Allerick Chen, Lori Tan Chinn, Mia Tagano, Sherry Cola, Lillian Lim, James Hong, Jordan Fisher, Finneas O’Connell, Topher Ngo, Grayson Villanueva, Josh Levi Director: Domee Shi Screenwriters: Julia Cho, Domee Shi Story: Domee Shi, Julia Cho, Sarah Streicher Producer: Lindsay Collins Executive producers: Dan Scanlon, Pete Docter Directors of photography: Mahyar Abousaeedi, Jonathan Pytko Production designer: Rona Liu Music: Ludwig Göransson Original songs: Billie Eilish, Finneas O’Connell Editors: Nicholas C. Smith, Steve Bloom Sound designer: Ren Klyce Animation supervisors: Aaron Hartline, Patty Kihm Character supervisor: Christian Hoffman Visual effects supervisor: Danielle Feinberg Casting: Natalie Lyon, Kevin Reher

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Turning Red

Where to watch.

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

What to Know

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

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

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Turning red.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 289 Reviews
• Kids Say 273 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Pixar coming-of-age tale explores puberty and parent issues.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Turning Red is Pixar's coming-of-age adventure set in early-2000s Toronto about Meilin "Mei" Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang), a Chinese Canadian teen who unleashes a literal red panda when she starts going through puberty. The panda transformation -- which can sometimes be intense and…

Why Age 10+?

The panda transformation can come with a dark side. When the panda gets angry, s

Young teens have crushes on members of a boy band. They kiss the band's CD and p

Insult language like "dork," "narc," "brainwashed," "jerkwad," "butthead," "frea

Off-screen product tie-ins.

Mei's mom makes a comment that a boy's behavior is the result of not wearing sun

Any Positive Content?

Main character Mei and her family (as well as writer-director Domee Shi) are Chi

Promotes open and honest communication between parents and kids, particularly te

Mei is a caring, thoughtful daughter, a compassionate friend. After her inner pa

Violence & Scariness

The panda transformation can come with a dark side. When the panda gets angry, she can cause both purposeful and accidental damage. Lunar ceremony that Mei goes through seems painful. Mass property damage during a concert scene when a giant, somewhat scary red panda wreaks havoc, forcing concertgoers to run for their lives; even the musicians look in danger (it's eventually played for laughs). After she transforms, Mei is kept in her room and jumps around, butting her head against walls and causing minor damage. Mei throws a dodgeball with her panda arm, and it goes so fast the ball breaks a window. Supernatural pandas push and fight one another. Arguments, confrontations.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Young teens have crushes on members of a boy band. They kiss the band's CD and poster and talk about the attractiveness of each member. A girl finds a boy cute and ends up sketching various images of him -- e.g., him as a merman, the two of them kissing, etc. She sweats as she draws the images, telegraphing her attraction/infatuation. Discussions of "hotness" and the boy band's gyrating moves. Teen hormones and puberty/adolescence (including talk of a girl's period) are a major theme.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Insult language like "dork," "narc," "brainwashed," "jerkwad," "butthead," "freak," "psycho mom," "creepy temple," and "crap."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Mei's mom makes a comment that a boy's behavior is the result of not wearing sunblock and of "doing drugs all day."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Diverse Representations

Main character Mei and her family (as well as writer-director Domee Shi) are Chinese Canadian; Mei's best friends are White, South Asian, and Korean. Mei's Canadian nationality and Chinese ethnicity are both prominently featured, and voice actors were cast authentically. Mei lives in Chinatown, and her family runs a temple. Strong representation of a young woman going through puberty and the confusing, awkward, hormonally charged nature of adolescence. Tight girl friendships are a major theme.

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Positive Messages

Promotes open and honest communication between parents and kids, particularly teens. Highlights challenges of adolescence and how the process can deepen bonds between friends and between parents and teens. Encourages curiosity, compassion, courage, self-control, teamwork.

Positive Role Models

Mei is a caring, thoughtful daughter, a compassionate friend. After her inner panda is unleashed, she becomes more curious, adventurous, courageous, but she also lies to her parents and keeps secrets from them. In one scene, she's disrespectful after weeks of not being honest with them. Mei's parents, especially her mom, have high expectations and can seem overprotective, but they love her unconditionally, want to do what's best for her. Mei's friends are supportive, kind, honest.

Parents need to know that Turning Red is Pixar's coming-of-age adventure set in early-2000s Toronto about Meilin "Mei" Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang), a Chinese Canadian teen who unleashes a literal red panda when she starts going through puberty. The panda transformation -- which can sometimes be intense and leads to both unintended and purposeful damage/destruction -- is definitely a metaphor for adolescence, and the movie skews more toward an older tween/early teen audience than many of Pixar's other films. The story centers the city's Chinatown community where Mei lives and features an authentically diverse cast. With puberty and adolescence at the heart of the action, expect references to periods and celebrity crushes, discussions of "hotness," and descriptions of the attractiveness of popular singers (as well as another older teen) and their gyrating dance moves. Occasional mild and insult language includes "crap," "freak," "jerkwad," "butthead," etc. The film encourages curiosity, compassion, courage, self-control, and teamwork, and families who watch together can discuss lots of issues afterward, from the importance of having honest conversations about puberty to the dangers of lying and keeping secrets and the need for both close friends and trusted adults. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (289)
• Kids say (273)

Based on 289 parent reviews

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What's the story.

Set in Toronto circa 2003, Pixar's TURNING RED centers on 13-year-old Meilin "Mei" Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang), a rule-following middle schooler who's the only child of her overprotective parents, type-A Ming ( Sandra Oh ) and quiet Jin ( Orion Lee ), who run a Buddhist temple in the city's Chinatown. Mei and her three best friends -- Miriam (Ava Morse), Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), and Abby (Hyein Park) -- are infatuated with popular boy band 4Town and crush on a local teen who works at a convenience store. One morning, after an unsettling dream about both real and celebrity boys, Mei wakes up transformed into a literal red panda. She finds out that the metamorphosis is an ancestral rite of passage for the women in her family when they reach puberty, but that a lunar ceremony can confine the panda into an amulet. Since strong emotions can bring on the transformation, Mei must call upon all her meditation skills to resist the change until the ceremony can take place. That works for a while, until her friends convince her that changing into the panda could be fun -- and lucrative.

Is It Any Good?

Delightful, funny, unapologetically girl-centered, and a surprisingly touching allegory for adolescence, this is Pixar's most teen-friendly film. It's also a gift for anyone who remembers the onset of puberty, pining over musicians (in this case, a shout-out to millennials who crushed on O-Town, *NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, and the like), and struggling to balance meeting parental expectations with friendships and newfound interests. Chiang does a lovely job conveying Mei's emotional and physical changes -- how she genuinely wants to obey her parents, take care of their family temple, and be a good girl but also enjoys her BFFs, loud music, and, yes, boys (even if they are of the unattainable pop-heartthrob variety). And Oh, who's also Canadian, is ideally cast as Mei's mom, who's more complex than the fussy helicopter mom she initially seems to be. Although dad Jin is a kind and loving presence, Turning Red is at heart a story about mothers and daughters. Mei and Ming's dynamic is in some ways universal: the bittersweet and at times outright confrontational push-and-pull of surviving teen rebellion (whatever that looks like).

Visually, Turning Red , like all Pixar movies, is phenomenal. Director Domee Shi (who herself is Chinese Canadian and was 13 in 2002), is clearly drawing on her own lived experiences of Toronto, its Chinatown, and being a teen in the early '00s. The movie, like her short film Bao , is also an emotional reminder of the tender joy and turbulent angst of growing up -- particularly with a demanding but loving mother who has sky-high expectations. But audiences don't need to be Canadian, Chinese, women, girls, or millennials to relate to and enjoy this story, because its themes and central metaphor work for everyone who has or will experience the awkward excitement of transforming from child to teen. Like Inside Out or The Mitchells vs. the Machines , Turning Red is a standout addition to animated movies that capture the overwhelming feelings of coming-of-age.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the theme of adolescence in Turning Red . How is puberty/coming-of-age a major part of the story? Do you think that makes the movie more relevant to tweens and teens than to younger kids?

Why do you think Mei always feels like she has to do what her parents, particularly her mother, wants? How does she learn to tell her parents the truth? Did you find the movie's family dynamics relatable?

How do Mei and other characters display courage , curiosity , empathy , and teamwork ? Why are those important character strengths?

Did you relate to the movie's setting -- both the time (early 2000s) and the place (Canada)? Do you think that's necessary to appreciate the story's themes and messages?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : May 3, 2022
• Cast : Rosalie Chiang , Sandra Oh , James Hong
• Director : Domee Shi
• Inclusion Information : Female directors, Asian directors, Female actors, Asian actors
• Studios : Pixar Animation Studios , Disney+
• Genre : Family and Kids
• Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Friendship , Middle School , Wild Animals
• Character Strengths : Courage , Curiosity , Empathy , Self-control , Teamwork
• Run time : 100 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• MPAA explanation : thematic material, suggestive content and language
• Award : Common Sense Selection
• Last updated : August 7, 2024

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What to watch next.

Over the Moon

The Mitchells vs. the Machines

Raya and the Last Dragon

Kiki's Delivery Service

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Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.