Turning Red

I really enjoyed Pixar's latest film, a story about "magical puberty" manifesting as a giant red panda. The heroine is a 13-year old Chinese Canadian girl named Mei, and the movie is full of tiny details familiar to any Asian immigrant, including the beaded seat cushion in Ming's car as she talks to Mei. The cooking scene with Mei's father Jin is also visually stunning, almost photorealistic, which makes it weird that the people are animated in a more cartoony style. I guess they're trying to avoid uncanny valley. Nevertheless, the movie is a great universal story about puberty and mother/daughter conflicts, despite some reviewer insisting that the story has limited appeal to a specific demographic. That's a very myopic viewpoint, and I've seen A.V. Club commenters defending that guy too, which is exhausting. Some people are trying to pretend that girls don't think about sex at that age, but I assure you that I was deeply into fanfic back then, and eventually in high school I became an ardent Holmes/Watson slash writer. Just because we're not having sex that young, doesn't mean we're not thinking about sex yet. I mean, would you ever imagine that teen boys aren't thinking about it? Too many parents imagine that their kids are still pure innocent babies long after they're not. You can't keep your kid from growing up, no matter how in denial you are.

Turning Red is just as universal as any of the other family movies put out by Disney/Pixar like Encanto or Inside Out. They appeal to kids who are dealing with generational differences and struggling with the emotions of growing up. It's only just recently that stories centered on white males have finally stepped back enough to let other kinds of families step into the light. Especially during Women's History Month, I appreciate having the girls in Turning Red free to be unabashedly themselves. It's such a fun movie about friendship and family that I hope the controversy will get more people to watch it.