Turning Red

Pixar’s latest animation is an energetic celebration of East meets West and girlhood meets womanhood as it follows Chinese-Canadian teenager Meilin on her coming of age identity crisis. This animee-inflected, yet characteristically exuberant, Disney production embraces what has been traditionally depicted in culture as female hysteria, instead as the normal vicissitudes of human emotion.

When Meilin gets overwhelmed or overexcited, she turns into a giant red panda, the very embodiment of raging teenage hormones. She desperately colludes with her mother to suppress this shamefully fluffy, attention demanding panda. However, with the help of her friends and some introspective analysis of who she really is, Mei finds a way of accepting all aspects of herself, banishing the shame inflicted by her sense of duty to her parents, to her culture, and to her gender. A delightful spectacle of a refreshingly frank portrayal of what it means to be a normal, emotionally charged, human being.