Pixar’s latest is a magical coming-of-age romp that celebrates females of all ages (as well as nice dads and bootilicious boys). It’s crammed with ingeniously surreal visuals, has three cheeky songs written by Billie Eilish and Finneas, and features a delightfully sardonic performance from Killing Eve’s Sandra Oh. So why aren’t Disney giving it a cinematic release (it can only be seen on Disney+)? Could it be that the Mouse House is embarrassed by a kids movie that contains the best red herring of the year?
Director Domee Shi, (the first woman to be put entirely in charge of a Pixar project), has found a way to explore several taboo topics, including the messy business of menstruation.
In Toronto, in the early noughties, Chinese-Canadian tween Mei Lee (Rosalie Chiang) - ever so slightly chubby and definitely no princess - is the pride and joy of her clenched mother Ming (Oh). In no particular order, Mei adores her three best friends, anime and a boy-band called 4*Town. But she never lets fun come before family. All that changes when her hormones kick in. A fantastically giddy sequence sees her crawling under her bed and furtively drawing pictures of local boy Devon (inspired by 4*Town pop videos, Mei casts Devon as a hilariously gormless-looking merman). Mei’s libidinous body has become a law unto itself and – pfff! - when she wakes up the next morning, she realises she’s turned into a giant red panda.
Amidst all this hoo-ha, Ming wrongly leaps to the conclusion that Mei is having her first period. Poleaxed by anxiety, but clearly determined to be a good parent, she bombards her daughter with euphemisms and sanitary products (“Did the red peony bloom?”, “I have pads. They’re scented!”)
Mei, as far as we can tell, isn’t bleeding. But simply by raising the possibility that one day she might, the film goes where no mainstream family offering has gone before. About bloody time.
Meanwhile, the magical panda stuff (a genetic quirk means the women in Mei family morph into giant red pandas whenever they’re emotionally overwrought) allows Shi and her team to investigate other stuff connected to pubescence. Mei is horrified by her furry, smelly, swollen panda self. She doesn’t want to be hairy! She doesn’t want to smell! She doesn’t want a big belly! So she agrees to a ritual, organised by the family, that will supposedly rid her of this “curse”. But the ritual clashes with a 4*Town concert. Naturally, the clan’s best laid plans go tits up.
It’s obvious that Shi worships at the shrine of Studio Ghibli. When Mei is the panda she looks as huggable as My Neighbor Totoro’s titular hero, while Mei’s Korean-Canadian best friend Abby is modelled on that film’s voracious little heroine, also called Mei. Another source of inspiration was surely the gritty fable The Tale of Princess Kaguya. Still, Shi wears these influences lightly. She grew up in Toronto and was a teenager in the noughties. She’s clearly telling her own story. References to Celine Dion and Tamagotchi give Turning Red its own unique flavour.
Nor can I stress enough how much Candian-born Oh brings to the proceedings. Recycling moments from her ground-breaking career, the 50-year-old actress makes Ming snarky, hoity-toity and disarmingly whimsical. It turns out the character has mother issues of her own and Ming’s awkward encounters with Mei’s grandmother (Wai Ching Ho) are as electrifying as those moments in Grey’s Anatomy where caustic medic Cristina Yang quails before her imperious mama.
Turning Red may be a gazillion times more ambitious than Pixar’s most recent efforts (Onward; Luca), but is it up there with the Toy Story series or Inside Out? Not quite. In the second half, generic elements creep in, and the bit where Mei meets her mother’s younger self doesn’t jolt as it should (films such as Mirai and Petite Maman do more with the same concept). Meanwhile another twist, involving Ming, feels overly indebted to Brave.
That said, Turning Red remains a must-see. Twerking, as only a giant, red panda can, Mei screams at Ming, “I like boys, I like gyrating!” Anime-mad girls are Shi’s target audience. But anyone with a soul will warm to Mei, a raunchy little rebel whose lust for life turns the term “red-blooded” on its head.
100mins, cert 12A
