Attack of the Puberty Panda (original) (raw)

Turning Red – This is the first Pixar film to be directed solely by a woman, and it explores the familiar themes of the awkwardness of adolescence and trying to fit in with an overbearing family. That it uses menstruation as a metaphor is pretty obvious, and it’s nice to see that they’re pretty frank about that, while still acknowledging how embarrassing it can be. (I’ve never really understood why men are supposed to be grossed out by periods, rather than just relieved we don’t have to have them.) Meilin Lee is a thirteen-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl whose family runs a temple in Toronto to their ancestors, especially Sun Yee, who had an affinity for red pandas. She tries hard to please her strict mother Ming, who doesn’t approve of her friends, her fondness for a boy band called 4*Town, or the fact that she’s interested in boys (despite never doing anything about that). I don’t know a whole lot about Chinese culture; I’m obviously aware that really strict parents are stereotypical, but Mei’s mom’s level of conservatism seems more suited to the fifties than to 2002, when the movie takes place. I’m not entirely sure why they set it twenty years ago, and can only figure it has something to do with the style of the boy band songs. Obviously boy bands are still a thing, but they’ve changed somewhat musically. Of course, to me, a forty-five-year-old, 2002 still sounds pretty recent. Apparently Billie Eilish, who wasn’t even one year old at the time the film occurs, co-wrote the 4*Town songs. Mei’s dad is much quieter and more accepting, but lets his wife run the show. One day, Mei turns into a giant red panda, and while she tries to hide it at first, her parents admit that this is a condition that affects every female descendant of Sun Yee, who prayed for the ability in order to protect her village during war. I appreciated the old Chinese art style for the flashback sequence.

It works sort of like the Hulk, the transformation occurring when the person is angry or excited, and ending when they calm down. There’s also a ritual that can bind the panda spirit, but it can’t be performed until the next red moon. In the meantime, Mei gets the idea to monetize the panda form, which the other kids turn out to love because it’s really cute, in order to buy tickets for her three best friends and herself to see 4*Town in concert. Unfortunately, the concert turns out to be on the same day as the ritual, with her friend initially getting the date wrong. During the ritual, Mei decides she likes the panda ability after all, despite the fact that it sometimes gets out of her control. When she decides she’s going to the concert (her panda form letting her get in without paying), her mom gets really angry and inadvertently releases her own panda form, which had been trapped inside a medallion, and turns into a kaiju-sized red panda who ends up destroying SkyDome.

It’s only when Mei finally explains her feelings and frustrations to her mom that things get sorted out, and Ming realizes that a lot of her own obsession with control comes from her trying to please her own mom, who still intimidates her.

There’s a gag at the end about the family using donations to the temple to fund the rebuilding of SkyDome. Shouldn’t there be some kind of government grant for things like that? I liked the movie pretty well, and found Mei easy to identify with, despite her very different life circumstances. I also found that red pandas aren’t that closely related to panda bears, despite their similar features, and zoologists aren’t quite sure how to classify them.

This entry was posted in Animals, Art, Cartoons, Families, Health, Magic, Monsters, Music, Relationships, Religion, Revisiting Disney, Sexuality, VoVat Goes to the Movies and tagged 4*town, adolescence, billie eilish, boy bands, kaiju, menstruation, pixar, puberty, red pandas, turning red. Bookmark the permalink.