Date: March 12th, 2022 6:30 PM
Author: Biden voter feeling pwned
https://web.archive.org/web/20220307192648/https://www.cinemablend.com/movies/disneys-turning-red-review-in-pixars-latest-comedy-girls-just-wanna-have-fur
Disney+’s Turning Red Review: In Pixar’s Latest Comedy, Girls Just Wanna Have Fur
I am not this film's target audience.
By Sean O'Connell published 7 March 22
Turning Red
(Image: © Pixar Animation Studio)
The finest Pixar Animation features, in this critics’ opinion,
play to a universal audience. We all imagined our adolescent toys coming
to life during playtime, and feared the shadows that lingered in our
closets or under our beds. By exploring those themes in Toy Story and
Monsters, Inc., Pixar’s animators and storytellers constructed comedic
yet emotional adventures that virtually everyone could watch and absorb
relatable life lessons (some, depending on your upbringing, being more
relatable than others).
Recently, though, Pixar has turned its reigns over to fresh
voices, and given them the freedom to share deeply personal – though
less universal – stories. Films like Onward, Luca, and now the studio’s
Turning Red come from the heart, without question. But they also risk
alienating audience members who can’t find a way into the story, beyond
admiring the impressive animation that is the Pixar trademark.
Also, when seen from a bird’s eye view, Turning Red plays like
Pixar’s version of Teen Wolf, only with a female protagonist turning
into a red panda instead of a wolf. Complete sequences are lifted
directly from Michael J. Fox’s underappreciated comedy and translated
into animation here. The result is a jumble of familiar ideas and manic
energy that exhausted me far more than it entertained me.
Turning Red’s target audience seems to be small, and incredibly specific.
In Domee Shi’s Turning Red, 13-year-old Meilin Lee (Rosalie
Chiang) tries her best to balance school work, an overprotective mother
(Sandra Oh), her social life, and the raging hormones that have her
drawing racy cartoons of the convenience store clerk on which she has a
crush. Meilin runs into the expected gamut of teenage issues. She’s
obsessed with a bubble-gum boy band called 4*Town, but her mom won’t let
her see them in concert. She’s a closet artist, even though her mom has
pegged her for a more serious career path. And she’s flowering into
womanhood… which, in Meilin’s family, comes with its own problem.
Yes, Turning Red embraces the awkwardness of a teenage girl
experiencing the onset of puberty, something unexpected in a Pixar
feature (though welcome, for its seemingly honest portrayal). Meilin’s
mother, for example, stands outside her daughter’s high school class in
one sequence and screams because she believes her daughter has forgotten
to bring pads with her. No doubt, female audiences watching will cringe
and chuckle along.
A subtle and more nuanced story about puberty’s effects on
teenagers might have been preferred. Turning Red, with a literal
translation, can stand for the color one changes into once embarrassed.
But Shi doubles down on the symbolism by adding a mystical wrinkle:
Because of a curse passed down through her family, Meilin learns that
she now morphs into a massive, fluffy red panda every time her emotions
spike (there’s that Teen Wolf twist). She literally turns red. And this
story hook leads to all of the expected plot turns, from Meilin
frantically hiding her transformation to her decision to selfishly use
the panda to win her popularity. Just like Teen Wolf did.
Throughout Turning Red, Domee Shi and her co-screenwriter Julia
Cho pepper in jokes and references that will speak directly to teenage
girls, be it their bonds over sappy pop songs, or their heated lust for
older teen dudes. Without question, Turning Red is the horniest movie in
Pixar history, which parents no doubt will find surprising. I
recognized the humor in the film, but connected with none of it. By
rooting Turning Red very specifically in the Asian community of Toronto,
the film legitimately feels like it was made for Domee Shi’s friends
and immediate family members. Which is fine… but also, a tad limiting in
its scope.
Turning Red has a frantic energy and a manic pace that wears you out after a few minutes.
Again, the protagonist is a hormone-soaked teenager who is
trying desperately to quell every emotional fit, so as to prevent
herself from turning into an actual panda. So by design, Turning Red
needs to ramp up its nervous system and plug directly into the mindset
of a young woman. It’s … a lot. It demands Turning Red to ramp up to an
“11” and stay there. It wore me out.
When Turning Red tries to lose itself in Meilin’s creative
process, celebrating her drawings and exploding with visual flairs
inspired by her work, it just reminded me of the far superior The
Mitchells vs. The Machines, another film that focused on a female
character experiencing a major life change (but one that also remembered
that a broader audience will be checking the film out, so it bothered
to include plot elements everyone could find engaging). As someone who
appreciates the guilty-pleasure joy of a good Boy Band track, these
elements of Turning Red are never as amusing as the movie wants them to
be. But the thematic split that tears Turning Red to shreds is the
mystical red panda bit, which is radically different from the grounded
“teenage girl faces fears of growing up,” and often makes Domee Shi’s
movie feel like two stories working in opposition of each other.
There’s an audience out there for Turning Red. And when that
audience finds the movie, I’ve no doubt they will celebrate it for the
unique animal that it is. In my opinion, however, that audience is
relatively small, and I’m not part of it.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5057251&forum_id=2#44137281)
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