Pixar's Turning Red

I'm just getting it out there. That was bad movie. Like, a REALLY bad movie. I had such a negative response to that that I'm a little bit frightened to write this review. Why? Because I am 100% certain there are gonna be a LOT of people who love this movie, and I'll be offending them by taking a dump on it. I'm taking the dump regardless. I mean, both The Goonies AND Mrs. Doubtfire have their share of rabid fans too, and that doesn't stop those movies from being terrible. I'm gonna push back against this and perhaps not be TOO afraid of offending people. I might. But guys, that was bad. I think deep down every fan of The Goonies and Mrs. Doubtfire knows those movies are really super shady and just refuses to admit it. Admit it about Turning Red, please. It is awful.

I suppose I should do a bit more measuring against previous Pixar movies. I will not have written as bad a review for a Pixar movie since The Good Dinosaur. To be absolutely fair, it's better than The Good Dinosaur, which painfully crossed the line from bad to appalling. But that is literally the only Pixar movie worse than it.

And I just KNOW so many people are gonna love that damn cute Red Panda and curse my name. I KNOW it.

What are my objections? I'll do the next part of the review in three parts. I'll start with my shallow, surface objections, go to my fundamental objections, and finally (and perhaps too defensively) talk about why I will stand by my opinion that this female empowerment movie is bad. I will not deny the female empowerment. I'm not a monster. What I will say is it's attached to a bad message and a bad movie.

Let's start off with the surface problems. What is with the movie being set in 2002? It's the weirdest choice for a period piece ever, because we never see an epilogue in the present with an adult Memei giving us an update on how things worked out. What the timeframe DOES do is make the characters talk in painfully daggy and dated mall-speak that was probably already super annoying in 2002.

I knew going in I wouldn't like the movie because the main kid character narrated it herself (as a hipster no less). I knew as the end credit silhouettes were essentially a dance party that everything bad thing I thought about the movie was ultimately true.

Those are the surface problems. But there have been plenty of decent animated films with similar problems and dated hang-ups (especially those actually MADE in 2002). But I think my biggest beef with the movie is that its premise and metaphor work against the actual situation posited.

Memei's mother is an absolute monster in my book. If I were involved in social services, I'd take that kid away to a safe home. The thing with the clerk and drawings was bad enough. But when she beats up the school custodian and starts waving around the box of Maxipads I am thunderstruck that Memei's challenge with turning into the panda is suppressing her emotions and keeping them in check. She has the right to be mortified by that, and the adult characters trying to get her to hold all that in, no matter the reason, are messing her up psychologically, whether the panda is present or not. It is 100% the WRONG metaphor for a girl with that specific mother doing those specific things.

And of course, the true moral at the end is is that the panda is GOOD for Memei, and she NEEDED to let it out to be heard by a mother who didn't give her opinions any weight before. But that should not have been a moral only apparent by the end. But having it be a surprise turnaround in Memei's opinion, they are suggesting that opinion was always up for debate. And it wasn't.

Now I expect that there will be staunch defenders of this movie sneering at my dislike for it. "He's a white male in his 40's. Of course he doesn't fully appreciate the female empowerment and ethnic diversity." Let me counter that notion with an interesting idea. Suppose that was true,. Suppose my dislike of a movie 13-year-old girls will love is due solely to me not being a 13-year-old girl. Let's say you are right and I'm not as woke as I should be. The thing is, even when the premise of previous Pixar movies were outside of my demographic and experience, they took great pains to try and keep the perspective universal so people not in the demographic of whatever movie it was, would be able to appreciate the culture and sensibility explored, possibly even for the first time in their lives. I loved being introduced to Mexican culture in Coco, and Italian culture in Luca. Getting to know Riley in Inside Out (not my favorite Pixar movie, for sure) was also fine because they took care to make what she was going through understandable to people not going through teenage girl things. And maybe I don't appreciate the movie because I feel outside of what it's exploring. But I don't believe either Pixar movies OR animated Disney films should ever be so insular or exclusionary to ANY demographic. I think those films should ALWAYS be trying to get the audience to learn new things and appreciate new cultures. Do I appreciate prepubescent teenage girls obsessed with boy bands more after seeing this movie? Not even a little bit. You can accuse me of being close-minded if you must, but the truth is if this were a great movie I WOULD care about that after I saw it. No doubt in mind. It's claptrap instead, which means I leave the end credits scowling.

Yeah, yeah, Bechdel Test-passing scenes, female empowerment, exploring Chinese culture. All very important and not damn good enough at the exact same time. I feel very comfortable giving that an extremely negative review although I don't suspect a ton of people will love me for it. *.