Turning Red Review: The Construction Of The Characters, Their Relationships And The World Of The Story

Voice Cast: Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan

Director: Domee Shi

Streaming Platform: Disney+ Hotstar 

Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and half star) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Turning Red Review: How beautiful she is, how precious Pixar is when she talks about growth. Not that the most talented and brilliant animation studio at Disney hasn’t been able to go further over the years. Yet there is something different when at the center of the magic “made in Pixar” is childhood or adolescence: regardless of the result, there is a desire to experiment beyond all limits Toy Story 4 and Luca.

And here comes Turning Red, the new original movie Disney+ which will land on the streaming platform exclusively from 11 March. A shame not to be able to enjoy the colors and quality of the animation of Domee Shi’s film on the big screen. Hoping, therefore, that Pixar productions will soon return to the room, we must admit that the use in streaming will give everyone access to a small masterpiece, and at an extremely negligible cost. Why yes, Turning Red confirms once again the extraordinary talent of Pixar Animation Studios, in a story of atypical and formation, concretized in a formula that is nothing short of winning.

Turning Red Review: The Story

This time the Toy Story studio takes us to Toronto, Canada, in 2002 to introduce us to little Meilin Lee, a thirteen-year-old daughter of a family of Chinese origin, clumsy but self-confident, serious, judicious and careful in managing her. life, divided between a small but solid group of friends, the school in which she excels and the help in the family business. Careful in always doing the right thing, Mei is a little model daughter, who cannot fail to have an idyllic relationship with her mother Ming her, authoritarian or perhaps just overprotective towards the girl. A relationship destined to change when the most complex and chaotic period for the growth of a young human being takes place: adolescence.

But puberty for Mei is an age of transformation in a more peculiar sense than one might expect from a normal teenager and the girl ends up mutating into a huge and soft Turning Red panda, adorable for the viewer, but critical for the protagonist. she finds herself forced to find a way to keep at bay, or at least learn to deal with this misadventure that has happened to her, also looking for a way to exploit it to her advantage in school everyday life.

Turning Red Review and Analysis

Domee Shi, the director of the film, is in love with anime, to the point that her influence is noticeable during part of the footage. With Turning Red we are facing a 3D animation film, a house brand, but it is also dotted with some differentiating details. And we’re not just talking about imitating traditional Chinese scroll drawings in a certain scene. The hyper-realism of food is possibly one of the most outstanding aspects of any anime. In Turning Red, food is not the center of the story, as it was in Bao, the director’s previous work, however when it is cooked we will drool as if we were watching Food Wars!

But there are other characteristics that are even more remarkable, such as the characters that exaggeratedly accentuate their features, with eyes that get bigger and fill with glitter, with sweat that is marked on the face or with battles in which the backgrounds disappear to give prominence to the characters. kinetic lines and explosions. The fourth wall is also broken, and the lighting effects frame Mei-Mei as the only character on the scene.

Although the true protagonist of the film is the giant Turning Red panda, not only in the plot but also in the visual part. The panda is lovable, visually soft and cuddly, the perfect merchandising mascot, and the movie itself is full of ideas on how to exploit the product with t-shirts, stuffed animals and more. Perhaps Turning Red is not as original a story about adolescence as it was in its day Upside down, perhaps its conflicts remain the same as always and its messages have the Disney stamp engraved on fire, but it has a good rhythm, good animation, and it will make us laugh out loud.

Is Turning Red reason enough for us to subscribe to Disney+? You could go without seeing it, but with all the exclusive content that is already available on the platform, it’s worth giving it a try, and by the way see what’s new from Pixar. A decidedly fertile ground on which to give birth and flourish a story that rides the freedom of expression and the autobiographical aspect to perfection. From the situations in which Mei discovers herself at that very difficult age to the moment of maternal comparisons, everything benefits from a veracity that is the daughter of the director’s ability to bring her emotionality to the screen, the true master of the film, protected by an animal that does as a concentrator of attention and therefore also protector of any of its drift.

The path of history pays particular attention to this lack of brakes, which cannot always remain on recognizable tracks, accusing continuous changes of gear and perhaps touching too many points. In conclusion, remaining in part a victim of the whirlwind that is the inner world of the protagonist herself. In the journey in stages that separates the girls from the concert symbol of entry into the adult world, Turning Red decides to tackle the theme of the generational clash by deconstructing the illusion of a simple collision of two worlds, broadening his vision to put himself more concretely in the shoes of the parent. A denunciation of the superficiality of which the simple division between old and new, right and wrong is stained. Unfortunately, it is precisely his dissolution that is the most awkward and least satisfying part of the film, which remains a very important first step and on which to continue working. Lymph and fresh air.

Turning Red Review: The Last Words

Turning Red satisfied by the new Pixar film directed by Domee Shi, which tackles in a complete way the theme of the difficulties of puberty and adolescence, reflecting on the complications and needs of the period, while staying very direct in the message. A lack of nuances, when compa Turning Red with other titles of the studio, which is the result of the choice of a pre-adolescent target and is accompanied by a chromatic vivacity, a cast of well-characterized characters, a well-defined context and a humor that knows how to exploit times comedians and physicality in an adequate and convincing way.