movie review - Turning Red
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
This is a family-friendly animated movie about a girl in Toronto's Chinatown community (the one on Spadina) who discovers that she is heir to a family secret - puberty-onset shape-shifting superpowers. When she gets triggered by her emotions, she turns into a giant anthropomorphic red panda.
Now I adore red pandas since seeing them in a fabulous environment in a Hong Kong zoo. They're interesting because they're not the sleepy one-trick-bamboo eaters that their more famous giant pandas are. They're also far more active. So that was a cute choice, and setting up a mother/daughter show-down as the central story made sense given where the hard-working daughter starts the movie - under her mother's thumb.
What I found interesting was that the high-pressure Asian-Canadian family setting is in stark contrast to the general Canadian population (which I'll lump in together despite Toronto also playing host to sub-cultures that are essentially Korean, Caribbean, Indian, Bengali, Kashmiri, Brazilian/Portuguese, Russian, Farsi/Persian, Filipino, Tagalog, Spanish/Latin, Tamil....) which is depicted as a great deal more relaxed and congenial. Which I suppose is perhaps a trade-off but also comes with things like absentee parents, alcoholism.... Not sure where I'm going with this paragraph but my point is that for a Pixar movie this one is unusually grounded in things that actually occur in people's life. It's a distinct change of pace from the the various Toy Story and Cars and Dori movies, which have a Disney-like unreality to them.
We enjoyed it, and for a Pixar film I bet it would stand up to a second viewing. Unlike, say, Cars.
Recommended.