Alerte rouge

I can recognize myself in a lot of Mei's experiences and learned something new about them as well. There are not a lot of movies that normalize other significant parts about puberty like periods and understanding your parents, but this one does and they do it perfectly. Even for those watching who cannot relate to Mei's experience, it's a great watch to see where she and other girls may be coming from.

It's 2002 Toronto. Meilin is a 13 year-old Chinese-Canadian girl on the verge of adulthood. Her family cares for their temple honorable their ancestor who turned into a red panda to defend her family. One morning, she wakes up to find herself transformed into a red panda.

This is a coming-of-age story from Pixar. It's fun. I love the characters. There is a realism in these characters. They feel very authentic. Aside from the supernatural, this is really a story of a girl trying to find her way through puberty and dealing with her mother-daughter relationship. There are no big name actors other than Sandra Oh which does give this a feeling of non-Hollywood. The Toronto locations are also part of that. This has plenty of fun while dealing with some real tween issues.

There's a reason this movie is a PG and not a U! Everyone having a little turn because a 13 year old girl is given some maxi pads and has crushes on boys - it's not woke, it's reality.

And if you have a problem with characters wearing turbans/hijabs, then I really think you need to look deep inside yourself!

This movie doesn't feel like a Disney/Pixar because it's cringey and has anime elements - but it's still fun, and my 10 and 8 year old boys had no problem at all with seeing sanitary protection because guess what, they see it in our bathroom every day!

The idea, the metaphor is not bad, coming of age or rather turning red (and honor your parents but stay yourself). Pixar production and graphics as good as ever. What is missing in the latest productions, in my opinion, is the genius of Pixar. They seem closer and closer to a typical Disney production, beautiful and musical but not brilliant.

This decline, I fear, may be due to an excess of production wanted by the Disney company, and I understand it but, there is a big difference between a tailor's shop and an industrial distribution of clothing.

Although I am an adult (and perhaps for this reason), I loved Pixar because in the past its target has never been solely that of children, they have included adults. Outstanding Pixar movies like "Wall-e", "Up", "Inside / Out", "Coco", "Finding Nemo" and Dory, also "Soul", even more than the still wonderful "The Incredibles", "Toy Story", "Ratatouille" , "Cars" etc. They bring with them messages, often moving, that do not concern only our children but also adults. Indeed, some messages are not immediately understandable by a very child / adolescent audience but they leave the fun to them anyway. In fact liked these movies as much as my son did.

This latest movie as well as "Brave", to a lesser extent also "Luca", show a slight flattening to Disney standards which I'm not saying are bad but they lack that typical modern tell and sneaky, Pixar genius.

Interesting. I thought my 14 year old & her 13 yr old friend would have loved this movie. We waited for it to come out and they had a movie night. 3/4 of the way through they were bored and switched to the Nintendo switch. They said they didn't really "get" what the point of the story was and they lost interest. Head scratcher. I need to watch it myself but if the target audience don't enjoy it - is it really for them?