Turning Red

 4/4

Starring (voices): Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Ava Morse, Hyena Park, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Orion Lee, Tristan Allerick Chen

Rated PG for Thematic Material, Suggestive Content and Language

One of the unsung values of animation is that it can visualize imagination in ways that live action (or what passes for it) simply cannot.  This is as true of Disney as anyone else.  With animation, Scar is far more treacherous and terrifying than any lion on the Serengeti could possibly be.  Compare the classic animated version to the photorealistic remake if you don't believe me.  All the money and technology in the world couldn't prevent it from feeling like a pale echo of the original.

But let's take this even further.  Animation can conceptualize the abstract.  With drawings, it is possible to visually express things like emotions ("Inside Out") or creatures that only the director can imagine (anything by Hayao Miyazaki...literally anything).  And while I didn't care for "The Tale of Princess Kaguya," the same principle applies: the art style, which imitated Japanese folk art, enhanced the mythic quality of the story being told.

Meilin (Chiang), or "Mei-Mei," for short, is your average adolescent: she's studious, hard working, and absolutely nuts over a boy band called 4*Town.  Her mother, Ming (Oh), is overprotective and overbearing, but Mei-Mei does her best to grin and bear it.  That becomes difficult when she wakes up one morning as a giant red panda.

What director Domee Shen and her writers have done is both risky and audacious: they have used Mei-Mei's transformations as a metaphor for puberty (she transforms with sudden emotions).  But more than that, she finds freedom in transformation.  So she has, quite literally, found a way to liberate herself.  Of course, such freedoms have a price and Mei-Mei must decide what she wants to become.  And yes, Shen finds a way to express this in a visual and story-related way as well.

Key to this film is how carefully Mei-Mei is written.  She can be angry, rebellious, embarrassed, and mischievous.  It's impossible not to identify with her, and newcomer Rosalie Chiang doesn't strike a false note.  As her overbearing mother, Sandra Oh disappears into her character to the point where no one will recognize her.  That's the hallmark of a good actor.  She successfully straddles the line between comic and real.

While not necessarily as dazzling look at as other Pixar films, it's going in a different direction.  Shen draws inspiration from anime and, odd as it sounds, "Wallace and Gromit."  The filmmakers listed their story influences as including "Ranma 1/2" (unseen by me) and "Inuyasha" (one of my favorites).  More care has been paid to characters facial expressions and body behavior than action and special effects (although it has those too).

What's impressive is the deft touch that Shen has for her story.  It's impossible to predict where the story is headed, and that's mainly because the two lead characters, Mei-Mei and her mother, are developed with such specificity.  They pause, they think, they change their minds.  This is good screenwriting; Hollywood should take note.  When audiences see a film with such a pregnant premise, this is what they expect.  Not some silly fish out of water tale.

I wouldn't go so far as to rank "Turning Red" as the best Pixar has to offer, but it is up there with all the greats like "Finding Nemo" and "Coco."  This is one of the year's best films.

Note: The story of "Turning Red" is, in some ways, quite similar to another Studio Ghibli flick, "Only Yesterday."  Yet, despite not being any more explicit than this film, was held up by Disney for twenty years because it dealt with the same material.  Think about that for a second.