Turning Red (2022)
★★½ — Turning Red (2022)
Turning Red arrived in March 2022 as something of a milestone for Pixar, being the first of the studio's feature films to be directed solely by a woman. That woman is Domee Shi, a Canadian animator who had already turned heads with her Oscar-winning 2018 Pixar short Bao, a brief but affecting piece about a Chinese-Canadian mother and an empty nest. Shi bringing a full feature to the same studio felt like a natural progression, and there was genuine anticipation around what she would do with a bigger canvas and a longer running time. The film is set in Toronto in the early 2000s, a period detail that gives it a pleasingly specific flavour, all low-rise jeans, flip phones, and boy band posters. The premise centres on Meilin Lee, a thirteen-year-old girl caught between the expectations of her traditional family and the ordinary, gloriously messy business of being a teenager, with the added complication that strong emotions cause her to transform into an enormous red panda. It is, fairly transparently, a coming-of-age story dressed in fantasy clothes, and Pixar has never been shy about using the fantastical as a vehicle for the emotional.
Shi draws on her own experience growing up in Toronto, and that autobiographical texture gives the film a cultural specificity that sets it apart from the more generic settings of many animated features. The production sits firmly within Pixar's house style, polished but with a noticeably more kinetic, manga-influenced energy to its character animation, particularly during the red panda sequences. For those who enjoy comparing approaches across the genre, it makes for an interesting contrast with something like Josep, another animation he has reviewed, which takes a radically stripped-back visual approach, or the more classical, theatrical register of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The voice cast is led by Rosalie Chiang, a relative newcomer at the time, as Mei, with Sandra Oh providing the formidable maternal presence of Ming Lee. The supporting friend group, rounding out Mei's social world, is voiced by Ava Morse, Hyein Park, and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, the latter already familiar to many from the Netflix series Never Have I Ever. The ensemble gives the film its warmth and a good deal of its comic energy, even if the characters themselves are not always given the room to breathe that you might hope for. Pixar releases tend to invite comparison with the studio's own high watermarks, and Turning Red was no exception, arriving into a crowded conversation about what animated family films can and should achieve. Whether it clears that bar is, of course, the question.
Turning Red (2022) is a perfectly fine Pixar film. Pleasant, colourful, and well-intentioned, but ultimately forgettable. Set in early-2000s Toronto, it follows Mei, a bright, overachieving 13-year-old who suddenly transforms into a giant red panda whenever she gets emotional. A metaphor for puberty, cultural expectation, and the chaos of adolescence. The animation is vibrant, the setting refreshingly specific, and the voice cast (especially Rosalie Chiang as Mei) full of energetic charm. There are laughs, heart-to-hearts, and a few genuinely sweet moments about mother-daughter bonds. But for all its surface appeal, Turning Red never quite rises above “okay.” The story follows a familiar coming-of-age arc without adding much new: rebellion, embarrassment, self-acceptance, reconciliation. The emotional beats land softly, but rarely deeply. And while the film celebrates Chinese-Canadian culture with warmth and detail (from dumpling-making to boy band mania) it sometimes leans on broad comedy that undercuts its authenticity. The supporting friends are fun but thinly sketched, and the central conflict resolves with surprising ease. It’s also tonally uneven, swinging between zany slapstick and sincere family drama without always bridging the two. Compared to Pixar’s best (Inside Out, Coco), it feels lightweight, more like a TV special stretched to feature length than a cinematic revelation. Turning Red isn’t bad, it’s just not special. It’s cute, harmless, and occasionally funny, but lacks the emotional depth, narrative originality, or visual daring we’ve come to expect from Pixar. Watch it with your kids or for nostalgia, but don’t expect it to linger in your heart.
For me, that sense of missed potential is what stays with you after the credits roll. There is clearly a good film somewhere in the material, and I have a lot of time for animation that tries to say something genuine about the experience of growing up, particularly when it is rooted in a specific cultural identity rather than the blandly universal. I found myself thinking about how a film like Wonder, another family film I have covered here, manages to keep its emotional sincerity intact even when the story hits familiar beats, largely because it commits to its characters without flinching. Turning Red, by contrast, keeps pulling back from its own sharper edges. There are worse ways to spend a hundred minutes, and I would not discourage anyone from watching it, but it is the kind of film that feels a little slighter each time you think back on it. Sometimes "fine" is the most honest verdict there is, and fine it very much is.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2022 | Watched: 2026-04-20
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Turning Red (2022) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Disney Plus
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Disney Plus
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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More from the 2020s: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · The Long Walk (2025) · Americana (2023)
More animation: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
More family: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Wonder (2017) · Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anastasia (1997)
