Pixar did a poor job marketing its newest animated feature. Granted, the studio has a history of promoting its films with oddly edited trailers that often fail to adequately communicate the film’s tone or story. On numerous occasions, my wife and I have responded to a Pixar trailer with “Well, that looks dumb,” only to be blown away by the final product.
With Turning Red, the trailers do a fairly adequate job of communicating what the movie is about: the challenges inherent in the transition into puberty. What is not clear is who the film was made for. One might think it’s appropriate for young kids, but the intended audience is actually teenagers (and, ostensibly, adults who remember going through a rebellious streak earlier in life).
I had meant to publish a review of Turning Red sooner, but my collective thoughts expanded to nearly 3,000 words. After some editorial surgery, I ended up with two articles. The first is the review below, and the second can be found over at The Rebelution (‘Turning Red’ and the Dangers of Expressive Individualism).
For the uninitiated, I typically grade movies based on three criteria: objectionable Content (C), Artistic merit (A), and my personal Preference (P). (C-A-P. Get it?)
Content (C): 4 out of 10
The opening monologue, featuring protagonist Meilin Lee, sets the tone of the movie like this: “The number one rule in my family? Honor your parents. They are the supreme beings who gave you life, who sweated and sacrificed so much to put a roof over your head, food on your plate—an epic amount of food. The least you can do in return is…every single thing they ask. ‘Course, some people are like, ‘Be careful. Honoring your parents sounds great, but if you take it too far…well, you might forget to honor yourself.’ Luckily, I don’t have that problem.” She then goes on to talk about all the ways she does and says and acts however she wants to. (It should be noted, as my friend Steven D. Greydanus points out, that this opening monologue involves “a bit of high-spirited misdirection,” in that it reveals how Meilin has “convinced herself that she marches to her own unconventional drumbeat even as she does her best to dance to her mother’s demanding tune.”)
One other snippet of dialogue is worth mentioning. In the film’s final minutes, Meilin once again asserts a misguided “honor yourself” ethic by boldly claiming to her mother, “My panda, my choice.” On initial viewing, this declaration appears awkwardly inserted. Even Richard Roeper says the phrase “sticks out like a tweet more than an organic moment of expression.” Nevertheless, after further speculation, I think this riff off the popular pro-choice phrase reveals more of a thesis statement for the film rather than a simple throwaway line.
The statement “my panda, my choice” is a reflection of a particular cultural overemphasis: hyper-individualistic autonomy. There’s nothing wrong with the concept of autonomy, of course, but even a laudable principle can be turned into a cultural idol. To adapt something I’ve previously written (about the idolization of consent), our contemporaries bow down and worship at the feet of individualistic autonomy—especially in the arena of sexual ethics.
Children, for example, are said to have a right to an abortion or to change their gender without their parents’ interference. We’re even at the place where questions like “Did God ask Mary for permission?” are on the table. When the self takes center stage of the universe, topics like consent and authority and responsibility and freedom fly out of their proper orbits and collide with each other in disastrous ways. Turning Red is one such effect of this collision.
As film critic Paul Asay puts it, “this story lacks the nuance or the fortitude to show where Mei [is] wrong, too. The movie suggests that, while family values are all well and good, the individual trumps all. It’s the ethos of the ‘me generation,’ just spelled M-E-I.”
Artistry (A): 5 out of 10
The technical credits are mostly solid, and the songs sung by the fictional band 4*Town (written by Billie Eilish and Finneas) are suitably entertaining. (My personal favorite is “Nobody Like U.”)
The real problem with the movie is the script. The film doesn’t handle its various themes adeptly, which actually isn’t the first artistic blunder for director Domee Shi. Her directorial debut, the Pixar short Bao, also dealt with a mother/child relationship, exploring moments of growing pains, rebellion, separation, and reconciliation. It has a sweet heart, but during the key dramatic moment in the short, the audience in the screening my wife and I attended responded with laughter—not pathos. For all of Shi’s good intentions, her vision didn’t translate exactly like she meant it to. (To be sure, even established and esteemed directors are not above this problem, as I’ve addressed here and here and here.)
A couple examples of poor execution are in order. First, there’s a sequence in which Meilin draws pictures of herself with a local boy (as a shirtless merman) in what she almost immediately afterwards decries as “horrible, awful, sexy things.” The speed with which she goes from disinterest in this boy to total infatuation is entirely unrealistic, pulling audiences out of the moment. Similarly, when Meilin’s mother discovers these drawings, she marches her down to where the boy works to not only confront him (“What have you done to my Mei Mei?!”) but also to share her daughter’s drawings with him and the rest of the store’s patrons. Ming’s over-the-top response defies suspension of disbelief. (And if you’re tempted to think I’m just mansplaining female emotions, my wife is more emphatic on Turning Red’s failures here than even I am.)
Another example comes from the film’s climax (which will require a few minor spoilers). We have been led to believe that a certain ritual will cure Meilin of her panda transformations—but she has only one shot, after which she’ll be stuck with her curse forever. Through a series of unfortunate events, several other individuals who themselves had gone through the ritual decide to bring their magical curse/powers back in order to resolve some third-act complications. And once the climax is over, everyone is reverted to their previous state with nary a glitch—as if the ritual is actually meaningless. It negates the gravity of the stakes laid out previously, gutting the film of its emotional punch.
Again, these are just two examples of character motivations and plot developments that defy an internal sense of logic. There are some worthy ideas and motifs contained in the narrative, but they aren’t handled well.
Preference (P): 2 out of 10
If DreamWorks was a wolf, and if Pixar was a lone sheep in a field, and if the wolf killed and gutted said sheep, then wore the sheepskin as a costume (à la Shift the ape), the result would be something similar to Turning Red. From the get-go, this movie exudes a DreamWorks persona. For me, that’s a net negative, but your mileage may vary.
At points, Turning Red reminds me of other cinematic products as well. One of them is Pleasantville, in that the main female character experiences liberation through rebelling against the rules, then decides to continue her liberation by being more of a “good girl”—all of it on her terms, of course. She gets to make her cake and eat it too.
Another film I’m reminded of, believe it or not, is God’s Not Dead. Admittedly, the connection is thin, but both films reach their zenith at a musical concert, in which a band inexplicably comes to the aid/support of the main character, even though they have no connection to him/her.
Anyway, when I compare this movie to DreamWorks, it’s not to say I despise DreamWorks’ entire output. On the contrary, it has produced some excellent films over the years, including The Prince of Egypt, Chicken Run, and How to Train Your Dragon.
That being said, DreamWorks films tend to be more irreverent, crude, and crass than those of Pixar. Over the past couple decades, Pixar has been the gold standard for computer animated films. So when I sit down to watch a Pixar film, the last thing I want to be reminded of is DreamWorks.
CAP grade: 37%