Turning Red is a Pixar animation movie directed by Domee Shi and produced by Lindsey Collins, a screenplay written by Shi and Julia Cho, and a story by Shi, Cho, and Sarah Streicher. Releasing in US theatres on March 11th, 2022.
It's 2002 in Toronto Canada. You follow 13-year-old Meilin “Mei” Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang). She helps take care of her family’s temple, dedicated to her maternal ancestor Sun Yee, to honor her but also to make her own mother proud. She hides her personal interests from her mother, Ming (voiced by Sandra Oh), specifically her and her friends’ interest in the boy band “4*town”. One night Ming embarrasses Mei after finding out she has a crush and confronts the boy showing him drawings Mei has drawn of him, humiliating her in public.
That same night, Mei has a small nightmare involving red pandas and wakes up the next morning as a giant red panda. She hides in the bathroom from her mother highly distressed not knowing what to do. Ming, however, thinks that Mei got her first period, barging into the bathroom with all of the different period products.
Yes, this movie is about girls going through puberty and getting periods. Luckily, the movie only mentions periods two times throughout the movie.
Anyway, Mei discovers that her red panda only comes out when she’s in a state of high emotion. She finally turns back into her human form but her hair remains red so she puts on a cap and goes to school. Ming still thinks Mei is having her period and gets caught trying to give Mei a pad and Mei cries of embarrassment on the way home. Ming, later that day, tells Mei that Sun Yee was granted this red panda transformation to protect her and her daughters but it is nothing but a hindrance to modern female descendants. She then explains that there is a way to get rid of the curse. It has to be sealed in a talisman through a ritual on the night of a lunar eclipse which takes place in a month. Mei’s friends discover her transformation but end up liking it and Mei continues to learn how to control her panda.
Mei tries to convince her mom to let her see the 4*town concert but she refuses, so Mei and her friends secretly raise money for the tickets. To raise the last of the money needed, she decides to go to Tyler’s (a kid in her class) birthday party as the red panda. Things go horribly wrong as Tyler insults her family and, in a rage, she attacks Tyler, scaring the other kids. Ming finds out and confronts Mei. Afraid to stand up to her mother, Mei blames her friends which leaves a heaviness in her heart.
Mei’s aunts and grandmother arrive at the house ready to perform the ritual. As Mei sits in her room, her father Jin (voiced by Orion Lee), shows her a video of her as the red panda and tells her to embrace the panda instead of trying to get rid of it. Mei realizes her father is right and abandons the ritual for the 4*town concert. Ming finds out she left for the concert and, in a rage, marches over to the concert as a ginormous red panda. Mei didn’t know her mother was arriving until she got there. She had a battle with her mother about her independence and, by accident, knocks her mother unconscious.
The ritual is performed, and Mei meets her younger mother crying about how she attacked her mother and hurt her. Mei holds her young mother’s hand and walks with her silently. They reach the seal and Ming walks to the other side keeping the panda while Mei doesn’t and keeps her panda. She regains a healthy relationship with her mom. The movie ends with the Lee family raising money to repair the destroyed stadium and happily embracing the red panda.
The Chinese influence in this movie is the ritual, the temple, the family connection, as well as the characters themselves. This movie really showed the mother-and-daughter relationship in a Chinese family. The mother always has standards the daughter must follow and that she has to work hard and get a good job and take care of her when she’s older. I think this movie shows how messy mother-and-daughter relationships can be and there is such a thing as generational trauma. Ming was raised in a certain way and that was the only way she knew so she tried to raise Mei like that as well. The scene where Mei and her mother are having a conversation in the astral plane is so important and so impactful. I remember watching it for the first time and breaking down crying. Just seeing how my mother was raised and knowing that she could’ve had a better relationship with her mom broke my heart. I also cried because I related to Mei. Working hard and trying to make everyone happy but being so hard on myself.
“If I taught you that, I’m sorry.” hit me the hardest because kids deal with this trauma and sometimes lose themselves. Parents have a huge influence on their kids if they like it or not and seeing a Chinese family admit they did something to hurt their daughter instead of thinking they are right made me tear up. I also loved this movie because this is one of the first Chinese-centered movies that I’ve watched that is marketed for younger kids. Pixar and Disney are big labels for the younger generation and I think that marketing to the younger generation is just as important as the older generation.