Turning Red

 2022, d. Domee Shi - Disney+

I moved to Toronto from smaller, more northern climes in 2001, I'm not sure how I missed this giant panda incident less than a year later, but now I finally know what happened to the Skydome. 

Basic plot: as Mei hits puberty she starts crushing on boys and liking pop music, and hanging with her friends. Her overbearing mother does not like these things Mei likes and kind of forbids her from liking these things, which, you know, is kind of an unreasonable ask.  But also with puberty brings changes, and for Mei, it's turning into a big, floofy (apparently smelly) red panda, which was a spell of protection once granted on her ancestor, now handed down as sort of a curse, since the transformation is triggered by any strong emotional response.

I loved this movie. Films about loving-but-complicated parent-child dynamics really get deep under my skin, and this is a great one at showing how these dynamics tend to be generationally influenced.  Plus, it's set in Toronto, where I live, which...you know, has never happened in a massive animated movie before, and rarely happens in film in general.  And there's a great sense of friendship Mei has with her friend group, full of love and support that's so differently rewarding from familial love and support that the film makes tangible.

Of course my stupid head just wants Mei to become a local superhero (like Squirrel Girl meets the Pitiful Human Lizard) but that's always where my mind takes everything. 

I liked that Mei at the onset is a little too much, a little off-putting, but the film allows us to quickly understand her, how her goals and achievements aren't fully for herself but to maintain her mother's love, or inhibit her wrath. That she loves things - and starts to want and desire things - that are outside of her mother's comfort zone invites us to see her true self, and then showing us the full brunt of her mother's overBEARing personality (Sandra Oh, Canadian legend!) gives us complete sympathy for Mei...and then she turns into a big, fluffy, adorable red panda, a metaphor for puberty and hormonally influenced emotions. 

IMO if anyone can't relate to this story because it's about a Chinese-Canadian family, or a pubescent girl is its lead, or it's set in Toronto, at best you're just kinda dead inside and emotionally unreceptive, at worst you're the problem, not this movie. I'm happy this doesn't have to compete against Encanto for awards (not that awards really matter) because I think I would have to choose Encanto but feel really bad about it.

As excited and happy as I am to see Toronto play Toronto in a major motion picture, an animated one at that, It did drive me a little nuts watching this that the geography was all nonsense. Is this what New Yorkers feel all.the.time when NYC is played by other cities in movies?