tek's rating: ¾

Turning Red (PG)
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Caution: spoilers

This is another movie that got only limited theatrical release due to Covid-19 (like Soul and Luca, among other things), and premiered on Disney+, in March 2022. I could have watched it there, but I expected to like it enough to want a hard copy of it, so I got the Blu-ray in May. And I was right, I am glad to own it.

The story is set in Toronto in 2002, but I felt like it could have been set just about anywhere, at any time in the late 20th/early 21st century. Still, the few touches that are distinctly Canadian and early Aughts were nice. The main character is Meilin Lee, whose friends call her Mei and her mother calls her Mei Mei. She's 13 years old, and has three close friends named Miriam, Priya, and Abby. They're all huge fans of a boy band called 4*Town, but Mei sort of hides her fandom from her mother, Ming (Sandra Oh). In fact she hides a lot about who she is as an individual, so as not to disappoint her mother. She works with Ming in the family temple that honors an ancestor named Sun Yee, who was a great lover of red pandas. Mei is also a straight-A student and musician, who tries very hard to make her mother proud in pretty much every way possible, even if she can't completely be herself around her mother. (Her father, Jin, is more supportive, but rarely speaks up.) One day, Mei draws some pictures in which she's fantasizing about a 17-year-old boy named Devon, who works at a convenience store. When her mother finds these drawings, she immediately assumes they're based on reality, completely ignoring Mei's statements to the contrary, and drags her to the store to confront Devon, which of course greatly embarrasses Mei. (There are some critics of the movie who felt Mei drawing such pictures was cringey, and unrealistic behavior for a 13-year-old girl, which is ridiculous, and of course there was backlash against that criticism, e.g. the meme at the top of this review. Personally, I did feel Ming's behavior, not Mei's, was terribly cringe, and I was mortified on behalf of both Mei and Devon.)

That night, Mei has nightmares, and the next morning wakes up having turned into a giant red panda. She's desperate to hide this change, which leads to Ming guessing that Mei has had her first period. (That's another thing there was ridiculous criticism about, with more backlash against the criticism. Of course there's no good reason for movies aimed at young audiences to make menstruation a taboo subject, since it's a perfectly natural thing that half the population will experience.) Anyway... Mei eventually manages to transform back into her human self, albeit with red hair instead of her usual black, and only transforms into the panda when she experiences strong emotions. And she finds that thinking about her friends can help her be calm enough to remain human. (Though she tells her parents she controls the panda by thinking about them.) Meanwhile, Ming continues to embarrass her. It's awhile before Ming and Jin finally discover the panda thing, It turns out to be a blessing/curse the girls in her family have dealt with ever since Sun Yee's time, but her parents weren't expecting it to happen to Mei this soon. There's a ritual that can be performed during a red moon, which is about a month away, that would expel the red panda spirit from Mei and trap it in like a locket or whatever, so she would never transform again.

Meanwhile, 4*Town is going to be coming to Toronto for a concert in less than a month, and Mei and her friends are desperate to attend. Unfortunately, most of their parents are against it, and none of them will pay for the $200 tickets. (And I can't blame them for that.) Ming especially dislikes the band, and refuses to believe her perfect daughter is truly a fan. She blames Mei's friends (especially Miriam, for some reason) for Mei's behavior. Especially when she later discovers that Mei has been intentionally turning into the panda for her classmates, in order to raise money for the tickets. (The girls were intending to lie to their parents about the concert, and say they were going to a sleepover that n night.) This all culminates in an appearance at the birthday party of a bully named Tyler, who was going to pay Mei $200 to be the entertainment. (Before that, the girls were short just $100 for the four tickets.) And... things get out of hand, but I don't want to say how exactly. Meanwhile, Mei's grandmother and aunts have come to town to help Ming deal with the upcoming ritual, which is conducted by an old shaman named Mr. Gao (James Hong). And I'm probably getting stuff out of order. And I kind of don't want to spoil one more plot point, but I also kind of feel like I have to: it turns out Abby had misread the date of the concert, and it actually takes place on the night the ritual is supposed to take place. So that causes some problems, as does the fact that Mei finally decides she doesn't want to give up the panda part of her.

Well, I guess I won't spoil any more than that. Trust me, some more major stuff goes down before the end. Things get pretty intense, but ultimately there is a happy ending. Anyway, for most of the movie I really didn't like Ming, but she had her good moments. I did quite like Mei and her friends (who have very distinctive personalities), as well as Jin (who has a very nice talk with Mei shortly before the ritual). And it's definitely an entertaining coming-of-age story, as well as a good story about mother(s) and daughter(s) coming to understand and accept each other. Oh, and I thought the title was a neat pun for being embarrassed. And I guess I don't know what else to say.