So I learned from my usual YouTube and Twitter sources how Turning Red caused this huge firestorm. Other than a few Saberspark respondents, it seemed that nobody was neutral on this, it was either love or hatred. The detractors delivered a great deal of cabbage-brained twaddle about “unrealistic” and “Cal Arts” and “unrelatable” and “cringe”. (I swear, I used to see the word “cringe” maybe once or twice a year, and in two thousand and twenty-two it’s being used like a freaking apostrophe.) The positive reviewers, on the other hand, mostly spoke about how this was relatable to them, and…yeesh. Every time I hear “Wow, my Asian mother was also an impossible-to-please tyrant, ha ha ha ha ha!” the impression I’m getting isn’t heartfelt solidarity but a strong impression that the world would be better off if the whole continent was resettled by, say, Africa.
As is usual with these raging controversies, there is one perspective I find prominently missing, i.e. mine. So, having determined that all the wrong people hated it and a large number of the right people loved it (including this one, of course, I resolved to watch it…just as soon as it came out on DVD, which is a thing that was almost certain to happen, right? Well, wouldn’t you know it, I was in Best Buy, intending to just look at this and that before picking up a pendrive and being on my way, when there I saw it. Not two months after it started streaming. Even had a 4K version!
So I watched. 
Hoo boy. It was not easy.
All right, I’m not a big movie buff, but my experience with this work was so radically unlike anything I expected that I decided that for the sake of my mental health I just have to get catharsis. So here it is, scene by scene, blow by blow. This is probably the only time I’ll ever do this, so just be warned, it’s getting long. So long, in fact, that I have to split it up. Again, I’m picking apart the entire movie, so very strongly recommend turning back now if you didn’t see it yet. And if this ends up in the Pit, I’m cool with that.
[deep breaths] Here we go.
0:46 – We begin with a montage of photos our heroine, Meilin Lee, “Mei” for short, and her parents. Her very first line is “The number one rule in my family: Honor. Your. Parents.” This is a sentiment which, real or fictional, automatically throws up gigantic red flags for me. The last photo is in the year this movie is set in, 2002. Specificity is apparently this great sin to the aforementioned cabbagebrains, but I never had any issue. Then again, the concept of “things that were big at the time” isn’t too much for me to grasp. 
(Aside: What I don’t like is the skirt-and-pants look. What is even the purpose of the skirt in that setup?)
1:27 – Very, very fast intro sequence where Mei asserts her independence, “bus adulthood” (13-65), and three “besties”, one of whom reads a vampire novel, and friendly reminder, this movie is shot from the perspective of a 13-year-old Canadian girl and you just have to deal with it. The interaction with these three characters, Miriam, Priya, and Abby, are the primary source of the movie’s “cringe”. Oh, Miriam is the slightly awkward one, Priya is the unemotional deadpan one, and Abby is the screamer who likes to hit things. I don’t obsess over race, so you’re on your own there.
2:43 – We learn that Mei is an energetic overachiever and a fantastic student. When I first learned about this, I thought this was a great thing. This was before I learned that Mei had an unhealthy obsession with success, caused at least in part by her mother, and it was creating serious psychological problems which would be compounded exponentially by the events of the movie, but I’m getting ahead of myself. One of the clips shows her block a shot from a basketball player with a nasty attitude, later identified as “Tyler”, and accidentally toss his ball onto the street, whereupon a passing truck promptly renders it non-regulation. He takes immediate offense and chases her off the court, intent on doing bodily harm. Keep the hostility of this exchange in mind; it will become relevant later.
3:41 – The gang briefly ogles Devon, a dull-eyed convenience store clerk (Foreshadowing! 
) before discussing a weighty matter, the latest boy band sensation 4 Town. Little fantasy scene with doves and sparkles and whatnot. As the bulk of my early aughts were spent struggling horribly to get and keep a job, any job, and sinking further and further into existential despair as one promising lead after another came up empty, developing massive irrational hostility toward manufactured pop bands wasn’t high on my priority list, so kindly forgive me if I’m unable properly rage at 23 seconds of cheese.
4:50 – And we’re introduced to the central conflict of the movie, Mei not being truly independent and having to cut things off with her friends due to familial obligations. Next “cringe” moment…dancing which involves the hips. If you watch any reality TV whatsoever, you’ve seen this stuff a hundred times. Sheesh.
7:00 – Enter Mei’s mother, Ming. She comes across as overexcitable and overprotective but still mostly a good person. That will change. (Aside: I know Sun Yi’s supposed to be a red panda hybrid, but I can’t look at that picture without thinking of …well, her.
8:13 – Mom and daughter work together to clean the temple they live and work at and chase off a trio of hoodlums. Ming threatens to call their mothers, which comes off as cute but is actually an ill omen. Then they conduct a tour. It’s strongly hinted that their love for each other is genuine. That will change.
9:27 – The father cooks! Yeah, uh…having a father who cooked for my family for many, many years, I am completely unable to find humor in this. Sorry. 
Mei and Ming enjoy appetizers and watch a Chinese drama in the meantime. Ming says “He should’ve listened to his mother!”, which Mei agrees with, and I know this doesn’t come across as a dire omen, but trust me, it is. A commercial for 4 Town’s North American tour comes up, whereupon Ming promptly shows her complete ignorance of the world she lives in, and yeah, that hit way too close to home. 
11:00 – The next “cringe” moment, Mei doing a pencil drawing of…crap, what’s his name again [checks notes]…Devon holding a bird. She’s clearly in denial over having a crush on him. She does another drawing, this one of him very gently (and nervously) holding her. And then of course mom chooses this exact moment to pop in with a snack, and obviously Mei accidentally leaves a corner of the notebook sticking out, and duhhh, mom finds it. I’ve seen less ham-handed plotting on Tom and Jerry. 
We see a second drawing, this of Mei and Devon touching each other’s faces. These, incidentally, are supposed to be “lewd” or whatever crap, and judging from all the vitriol you’d think they were on the level of my numerous $22 DVDs featuring beautiful, fit, extremely nonmonagamous women doing highly specific physical activities. Ming gets completely discombobulated and immediately accuses Devon of doing something bad to Mei.
12:58 – Haaaaahhh. 
Up to this point, Ming has been your typical high-strung go-getter. Skirts the line of “bad parent”, but doesn’t cross it. Here is where she blasts over that line in a bullet train. She tears right over to the convenience store to confront Devon and shove the drawing into his face. In front of a pretty big crowd for that time of day. And guess who else is very inconveniently here: Tyler! He’s very clearly raring for an chance to subject Mei to mortifying embarrassment, and Ming is about to give him exactly what he wants. She babbles some deranged gobbledygook about 17 year olds not wearing sunblock and doing drugs all day. Oh yeah, a third drawing, this of the clerk as a merman, which, as any idiot knows, is a means of avoiding sexualizing someone. (And let’s throw a Big No in, because everyone loves tired cliches, right? )
14:00 – All right, I want to make absolutely sure everyone gets this. Ming just took Mei’s private fantasies and exposed them to a roomful of total strangers (whom she was utterly oblivious to), including one who has been very strongly hinted to be Mei’s worst enemy (which we later discover he is), and spewed out a bunch of nonsense guaranteed to make her sound like an utter kook, and afterward she acts like she did Mei a goddam favor. 
And of course she just left the drawings with Devon because WHY THE HELL NOT. We are a little over a sixth of the way into the movie and Ming just outed herself as a raving fanatic with nonexistent judgment and zero situational awareness. Heck, she acted like an outright psychopath. This is a person we’re supposed to sympathize with. Back home, cue a bout of self-loathing, guilt, and paranoia on the part of Mei, just more good clean family fun.
15:15 – Following a couple of ominous portents and a nightmare induced by Ming’s recent bout of spastic rage…thanks for that too …Mei makes a shocking discovery! That’s right, her t-shirt and shorts are not lying in torn tatters on the floor! (Yes, I’m fully aware what the damn rating is; I just find it humorous that her clothing always conveniently appears and disappears as needed without taking the slightest damage and no one every mentions this. I’ll take my humor where I can.)
17:13 – A few seconds for Mei to come to terms with her sudden sports mascot-izaton, and…oh yeah, here it comes. “Did the red peony bloom?” Comical misunderstandings and Ming offering painkillers, a hot water bottle, and pads follow. (Oh, the dad’s name is Jin, BTW.) Of course, since double entendres, euphemisms, and misunderstandings being about sex, sex, sex has been ingrained in our culture for decades, you get the usual morons blabbering about how this is adult stuff or whatever. Folks…no. No it isn’t. This is at the level of a sitcom. And of course, since mom never actually uses the word “menstruation” or “period”, you can always pretend it’s something else. Seriously, girls have periods young now; this is not an inappropriate subject. Might I add, this marks the only time in the movie that I found Ming at all entertaining.
18:53 – She tries to sleep it off, and she discovers that calming her emotions can reverse the transformation, and dang, did it really only take two minutes? Did mention that this movie proceeds at an absolutely blistering pace?
20:00 – Ooh, lovely, first day back. So after the worst night of her life, she now has to walk on eggshells the whole day, plus Ming thinks she went through that other change, and on top of that her hair has permanently changed color so she has to wear an unseasonable ski cap. Geez, what could possibly…
21:39 – Oh, right, Tyler. Now he has all the ammunition needed to make her life permanently miserable, starting with putting one of her drawings on a locker. We see… him… 
I’m sorry. I just can’t. And I’m baffled that with all the noise about “inappropriate” this and “cringe” that, there’s been next to nothing about the repulsive worthless gutter trash SLIME whose actively trying to make Mei’s life miserable and ABSOLUTELY FREAKING NOBODY EVER DOES ANYTHING ABOUT. Yep, spoiler alert, the people who should be protecting Mei are doing COMPLETELY JACK-ALL about an incredibly disruptive force in their school! And it’s already been established by his very first appearance that he’s a bully, meaning that in the future he’s going to escalate. This scene should have a damn trigger warning. I grew up in an age when the Baby Boomers had the whole country in the iron grip of apathy, obliviousness, and rampant self-absorption. Schools were pits of anarchy where discipline, where it existed at all, was applied haphazardly and vindictively. This was an era where a child could act like a spoiled, disruptive, infant from birth to literally the very last day of high school and be IGNORED IGNORED IGNORED…
…I have to stop now. My hands are getting too twitchy to type. Damn these punks and every goddam one of their enablers to Hell.
All right, let’s pick this up after Ming acts like a creepy stalker and assaults a security guard (or “helicopter parenting” ), then brandishes a box of pads like it’s freaking Excalibur, which pushes Mei over the edge and causes her to change in front the entire class.
23:50 – Chase scene. 
27:10 – Exposition time! The ancestor Sun Yi used the power of the red panda to protect her village from attackers, and she passed that on to all her female descendants. Mei takes this badly, her usual response to being manipulated by forces out of her control, and…hoo boy. Mom never mentioned this earlier, BTW, because she thought that watching Mei like a hawk could delay the onset, proving that making completely brain-dead decisions is not new for her. “Fortunately”, there is a cure, but it must be performed during the next “red moon” (no one ever explains what this is), on May 25. Mei is completely distraught as she goes to bed. Swear to Reimu, if this movie gives me any more emotional whiplash, I’m going to need surgery.
31.48 – Her friends show up, discover her horrible secret, and briefly freak out…very briefly. Like, five seconds later they decide that she’s just adorable. Mei is still distraught, but the crew manages to come up with the perfect pick-me-up…4 Town a capella. 
Aww, is that genuine affection? And what’s this, it turns out that the power of friendship can hold back the transformation! 
(It’s Pixar, don’t think about it too much.)
35:01 – [taps her upper arm] “Abby, hit me.” [Abby punches her in the face.] 
Oh, that was superb. 
36:11 – A few tests for Mei to prove that she can keep the panda under control. I consider this a convenient excuse to show a box of kittens. Whatever it takes.
38:01 – Ming absolutely refuses to let Mei go to the concert, whereupon we learn that she has the standard ignorant snooty attitude toward young entertainment and is very likely racist as well, which puts the tally at one point for Overprotective But Well-Meaning Mother and about eight for Vile Rampaging Neanderthal.
39:20 – “Where does she get that from? Treating her own mother like that.” “Ming, it’s your mother.” “I’m not here!” (This is the first time we hear Ming’s name, BTW.) Ming’s mother, who is apparently the only person Ming is afraid of, disapproves with how Ming’s handling the panda situation and is bringing in the cavalry. Her name is never given, so I’ll just call her “Gramms”.
39:57 – Ah, a “sport” where children of wildly varying physical abilities throw large pieces of rubber directly at each other full bore, another thing the Baby Boomers were perfectly fine with since they weren’t the ones limping off in pain! And of course that subhuman stinking pustulent slime mold Tyler is here, and he ducks at the perfect time to avoid and Mei gets ejected 
moving on.
40:58 – Mei is understandably bitter that she’s been a good girl all these years and did everything Ming wanted, only to get denied what she wants. The crew decides to rebel and go to the concert together anyway. Now the question is how to get the necessary $800 (whoa ). Abby needs the panda to help. Some other girls see Mei in panda form, Mei is scared…but the girls love the panda, one thing leads to another…time’s a-wasting!..and they use the panda to make the money, all according to Hoyle. 
Mei pulls up a calendar with the current date (1st), concert date (18th), and red moon ritual date (25th) helpfully marked out, and the merchandizing blitz is on! Man, kinda wish Ala Moana still had its Disney store so I could witness the fitting irony firsthand! 
46:14 – The gang takes a break from the whirlwind capitalistic enterprise. Doing great but still $100 short. And…Tyler’s back. And you’ll never guess what he’s got up his sleeve. That’s right, some good old-fashioned BLACKMAIL!
Did I mention something earlier about escalation? Man, so many flashbacks about “They only want attention! Just ignore it! Ignore it!” Because that, I quickly discovered, is the Boomer answer to everything. And a few years down the line when the undisciplined, unrestrained, unchecked, unwatched clump of raw sewage shoots up a diner or sells state secrets to Russia, what’s the inevitable response? CONTINUE ignoring it! It’s bliss, you know!
Anyway, Tyler’s throwing a party, he wants the panda, $200, yada yada.
), and Chun Li’s bracelets, this movie’s totally loading the bases for a truly horrific conclusion, isn’t it? And of course Ming effortlessly stumbles across samples of panda merchandise Mei shoved under her bed because why make an effort now, huh? 
And now, serious talk. Mei’s besties, Miriam, Priya, and Abby…the only people in the entire movie who have shown her any compassion whatsoever, BTW…don’t want her to give up the panda. Ever. Mei is tempted, but decides that she can’t defy her mother’s wishes. Tonight has to be the end.
She is absolutely overjoyed. Soaring into the SkyDome through the partially-opened roof (which of course should be 1. illegal and 2. suicidal, but who’s counting at this point), she meets up with her buddies. Miriam is miffed that Mei threw them under the bus, but…kiss-and-make-up with the Tamagotchi because we don’t have time for anything, least of all this.