Turning Red 2022
I was looking forward to the next Pixar movie and disappointed that this was not released to theaters. I feel like Pixar has been going downhill in a lot of ways, and the character design here continues that, with maybe some of the least appealing characters yet, very simple cartoonish representations of people (similar, but maybe worse than Onward and Luca). Even the red panda, one of nature’s cutest animals, just looks fat and stressed out. I had a chance to get a couple of the posters for the movie but neither design was appealing. This movie centers on a hard driven 13 year old girl of Asian descent in Toronto and her three best friends. Despite the introduction of the key plot point of the girl turning into a red panda when she gets stressed out, the first half and maybe two thirds of the movie is very girly as the girls ooh and aah over boys, a boy band (the movie is set in 2002, I guess as a new generation of writers and directors take over, 2002 is the new nostalgia; the 80’s had a good run), and talk about getting their periods. It is mostly harmless, but also tired and not particularly interesting. At about that two thirds mark, things finally come to a head and the movie gets much better, but it feels like we had to struggle through a lot of groundwork to get there. Even so, it still plays out by a fairly predictable formula. I am too old for the boy band craze so just having a take off of a boy band isn’t that funny or entertaining for me. I question the use of pop references in movies that should otherwise be timeless, and doing so gets into Wreck-It Ralph territory. I‘m not entirely sure young girls today are going to really be that impressed with that approach either, or tamagotchis for that matter. Everyone can relate to problems with parents, peer pressure, and how wonderful friends are, so the movie still hits home and Pixar knows how to use that effectively. I just wish the writing was better with characters that looked less like claymation. I‘m not really the target audience (kind of a shame it has to have one) and I think there will be more appeal for the fairer audience, but I can only give this a B and get my hopes up for the next Pixar (decidedly more boy-oriented) movie in just a few months, Lightyear.
Written: 12 Mar 2022
Owned on: UHD, Blu-ray, Digital