Turning Red: Movie Review

Vocal cast: Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, James Hong

Director: Domee Shi

It's 2002 Canada in the delightful Turning Red, an animated film that normalises menstruation in the mainstream, galvanises girls going through changes, and, as a result, appears to have been punished by releasing only on Disney+.

Chiang is Mei Lee, an overly exuberant, dorky 13-year-old who struggles with the need to stay a dutiful daughter to her mother, and who's torn between her western loves of boybands and just generally messing about with her friends, living the mantra that "this year is going to be my year".

Living by the honour your parents code (the number one rule in her family, Mei informs us straight away) is thrown further into disarray when one morning, Mei wakes up to smelly armpits and having transformed into a giant red panda.

In case the metaphor is a little too subtle, Mei's mother Ming (Oh) asks her daughter "did the red peony bloom", before bursting into the bathroom with pads and pain medication. 

However, Mei learns that she can control the red Panda within her by keeping calm - only life as a teenage girl can be anything but calm with unexpected crushes thrown her way, the excitement of daily life, and the possibility her boyband dream group, 4* Town (of whom there are five members) are heading to her hometown for a concert....

Turning Red has a joyful exuberance in its energetic opening that's hard to deny.

Right out of the gate, Mei is a universally awkward teen, whose dorky tendencies are wonderfully recognisable regardless of the year 2002 settings. 

Director Domee Shi cleverly captures the nuances and complications of the mother-daughter relationship as well as the cultural complications that Mei faces trying to follow family and her own heart's rampant desires. Having triumphed with short film Bao about a dumpling, Shi makes an easy fist of the whole premise, whether it's the adoring dolly eyes of the girls over their beloved band, some nods to Despicable Me's most enduring catchphrase or the push and pull balance that families have dealing with children becoming adults.

It may sound like damning with feint praise, but Turning Red makes everything normal - from Mei Lin's group of nerdy friends and their interactions, to a normal school kid trying to get by without the crushing embarrassment of their parents, Shi's script normalises every aspect of being a teen girl, and deserves plaudits for not playing any of it for either easy laughs or OTT screen desires. It helps greatly that Chiang delivers Mei Lin with sass and smarts, rather than quirk and cutesies.

Sure, it's a tale of growing up, and one to be applauded for its outright demonstration of the embarrassing reality of first pads and periods for many girls, but in truth, after the early stages may have some parents worriedly scrabbling for the remote to avoid awkward questions, Shi and her script are to be praised for getting this out into the mainstream (even if a cinema audience and wider opening would have helped the cause greatly).

Where Turning Red falls a little apart is in its Kaiju-esque Ghostbusters-homage finale, which disappointingly opts for rote rather than revolutionary in its execution and which feels crushing to the wonderful tale of friendship and growing up that's already gone. 

Turning Red is an earnest film, but not one that wallows in its sanctimonious possibilities - rather it turns the whole situation into something more heart-warming, clever and eminently honest than you could ever imagine.

Turning Red premieres on Disney+ on Friday March 11.