Will Pixar deliver another master piece this time with "Turning Red"?
This article is written in English.
TL;DR
In short, "Turning Red" (2022) felt like a cross-over between "Teen Age" x "Family Issue" x "Godzilla" x "Sailor Moon". Quite good, but I would not recommend this for a rewatch session.
Warning and Brief Explanation
Brief Warning
This review article contains spoilers. Please refrain yourself if you don't want to spoil yourself.
Age Rating
- Well, the only place I could see the age-rating for this movie is through IMDb1. Funnily, none of these official page (on Disney Movies website, on Pixar website, and on Disney Media page), actually put the rating for the movie, despite listed A LOT of information regarding this movie.
- Based on my understanding2, I don't think there are any scenes where parental guidance was needed throughout the movie. The only exception was probably when Ming (Mei Lee's mother) assumed that Mei-Mei got her first period.
Notice
- This article aimed to review this movie, and spread information about it.
- No copyright infringement intended, aside from this article that is written by myself.
- Media shown here, whether images, videos, or such are embedded from the original source.
Introduction
I guess this is the first animation movie in awhile from Pixar that I watched. The promotion for this film throughout social media also felt... hm... moderate. Not many people are talking about this movie, so it's not garnering much hype when I open my social media. But I do remember a few posts talking about culture/cultural appropriation regarding this movie in a few days since the premiere on my Twitter timeline.
Anyhow, back in the early 2000s - early 2010s, there were a lot of good movies produced by Pixar. Such as Wall-E, Toy Story franchise, Coco, and many others. Now, a new movie has come out from Pixar. Will this one be as good as the other movie they produced back then?
Prior to read this review, you could watch this trailer available on YouTube:
Trailer
Details and Viewer Discretion
Series Details
Following information compiled from various sources, namely its entry on IMDb1, and my own understanding2.
| Title | Turning Red |
|---|---|
| Also Known As (a.k.a) | There are various translations to this title in various languages which can be read here1. |
| Released on | 01 March 2022 (premiere in Hollywood, California), 11 March 2022 (Indonesia)1. |
| Genre | Animation1, Adventure1, Comedy1, Coming of Age2, Mythology2, East Asian (Chinese/Korean) Culture2 (actually regarding this, I think this movie is more toward Chinese culture as most characters-dialogues-settings show "Chinese culture"). |
| Type | Movie. |
| Running Time | 100 min (1 h 40 min)1. |
| Notable People1 |
|
| Original Country2 | United States. |
| Spoken Language2 | English, Korean (can't be heard/decipher clearly, mostly spoken by Abby, and it's not that long in the movie, probably two or three sentences max), Chinese — Cantonese (when the characters whispered the spell, and a few sentences). |
| Subtitle | Various languages of subtitles are available already on Disney+. On my page, the available subtitle are Chinese, English, Indonesian, Malay, and Thai. Please take note that foreign language spoken in the movie is not translated into other languages with the subtitles. |
| Platform or Where to Watch | Seems like this movie is available exclusively on Disney+ only as for now as this is the original movie of Disney and Pixar. |
| Viewer Discretion | I guess none, aside from a scene, where Mei-Mei rushed toward the bathroom after turning into Red Panda, then her mother (Ming) assumed that this is her first period (when it's not). No blood or any related things to the period scenes can be seen, aside from a few scenes mentioned menstrual pads after. So this is probably where parents are going to give guidance to their children, if they are asked what a menstruation/period means. |
Review
Theme, Background
The movie revolves around a tradition (or a curse probably?) that happened to each ancestor of Sun-Yee, and for the Main Character here, Mei Lee, the tradition is yet to come, until one day. One day, in the morning, she turned into a Red Panda, and the temporary solution she understands to turn her character back to human form, is to calm her mind, for instance by thinking about her best friends. But she needs to maintain her stress level, as when she gets stressed (or in a lot of stress), she's gonna change to Red Panda, again.
The movie then goes on with this main theme till the end. There were stories where Mei and her best friends turned this Red Panda change into a profitable cause (as they wanted to watch their favourite band concert, 4-Town). Then stories where Mei, her mother, and other women in their descendants line included in the ritual to keep the Red Panda from reappearing in their life. In short, the story mainly revolves around the Red Panda, as the title suggests.
Characters, Story Flow, Dialogue, Point of View
Characters
Well, regarding characters, I guess we could divide the characters into a few circles:
- Main character: Mei Lee (also known as Meilin in various sources, such as IMDb1, or even Meilin Lee in the subtitle, but all official sources stated her characters is named "Mei Lee".
- Side character
- A - Mei Lee's parents: Ming, and Jin.
- B - Mei Lee's best friends: Miriam, Abby, and Priya.
- C - Mei Lee's grandma and aunties.
- Additional characters: Well, this includes other characters such as Tyler, Mei Lee's classmates, 4-Town (stylised as 4★Town), and other characters appeared in the movie.
I guess that could divide how the characters work in this movie. The main character, as our movie mainly focuses on, is toward Mei Lee. Other than that, all side characters listed above are related to each other in various scenes in the movie.
Story Flow
The story goes forward, and there are only a few scenes where flashbacks happen, which is where the story of Sun-Yee was told, 27 minutes into the movie. Other than that, there were no more flashback scenes as I remembered.
Dialogue
Most of the time (95~98% of the scripts), all characters speak English. There are only a few times where Abby and the narrator speak Korean. Then when they enchanted the spell, most characters spoke Mandarin (Cantonese).
Point of View
The story mainly use Mei's point of view from beginning till the end.
Conflicts
Talking about conflicts... Well, there are a few in this movie.
- Mei Lee turned into Red Panda, out of nowhere, and it's definitely not normal, and she needs to be careful, "to match" the normality out there.
- Mei Lee is also in the age where the "rebel phase" mostly starts to occur, as she is in teenage (she is 13).
- You can also see, what Mei narrated in the beginning of the movie, where she talked about how free she is, actually conflicted with what happened throughout the movie. We can see how her mother is actually super-protected toward her (for better or for worse), and there were a lot of moments when she can't even rebut her opinion in the movie. Few important moments regarding this are where she explained how she is a die-hard fan of 4-Town, and wanted to go to the concert in her town; and when she didn't even flinch to save her best friend after the party incident in Tyler's house.
- Also notable conflict near the end of the movie is when Mei refused the idea of keeping her Red Panda in a pendant, then she flew out to the stadium (SkyDome) to watch 4-Town Concert. Her mother then blew out, and messed up the concert. Alas, Ming then faints out, which makes Aunties and Mei help each other by turning into Red Panda to bring Ming back to real life.
My Review
Hm... I'm not feeling that Pixar vibe from this movie, compared to older releases from them. Well, graphic are good (there are a lot of good scenes, and it's so eye-candy and definitely an enjoyment for our eyes), music and sound mixing are good too, they speak clearly too (aside from Korean language that I can't decipher it, even though I have listened to Korean language since 2007/8-ish till now). The only downside probably... Storyline.
Well, it's an animation movie, and sure, there could be some "imagination" going on around, which probably makes the animation movie have some magic throughout its duration. However Turning Red was... kinda depicting how human life be, with some magic, where a curse going down from your ancestors, which will turn you into Red Panda, as a magic. It's fun. There is also the coming-of-age problem, along with the teenage phase, which makes this more relatable, probably even for 13-18 age or 18-24 age in the demographic. But to make a movie that cross-over between Godzilla-Sailor Moon-Family Issue-and-Teenager felt... I don't know. Weird?
Like the movie started good, and started decreasing its magic near the middle. It's kinda understandable as to why Mei wanna keep her Red Panda, and why her mother then exploded, and stormed to the stadium. But to destroy the concert, with no gore scene at all at the stadium, then all of her friends and 4-Town sing-a-long with different spells with what the aunties said was... Weird. I just felt it was kinda absurd of the correlation between these two circles near the end of the movie.
Also, considering how Mei-Mei is different from others (I mean she's a Red Panda), and it's also 2002, but no one is actually panicking as if nothing different/weird throughout the movie also felt weird. Like it seems as if nothing happened even though it's clear that there is something different in front of their eyes. I don’t know, probably I was expecting people around her to react more to this change, that probably could add one-or-two differences to the movie. However, regardless of this weird development, this is quite good for a movie, and there are a lot of morals that viewers could take from the movie. Even with the fact that I couldn't bother to recommend people to watch this movie.
Conclusion
Do I Recommend This Movie?
Hm... No?
If you are really bored, and wanna watch a movie, just to kill some time, or wanna catch up with the latest movie from the animation scene, then go on. But to recommend a rewatch session for this movie, no, I'd rather watch something new rather than this. A bit sad, despite all of these good points aside from the storyline that felt a bit... Shallow.
So for me, I scored this movie as:
🙂 Hmm.........
That's all for now. Thank you for reading this review, and see you in another post. Bye! 👋🏻