Made for anyone who has been — or has even known — a teenage girl, Turning Red nails the intensity of all the feelings you have at the cusp of adolescence. (And by “you,” I mean “I.”) This Pixar movie about a tween who turns into a giant red panda when she feels a big emotion is a perfect metaphor for the experience of puberty, though it will likely also ring true for anyone who has ever felt like a weirdo. Turning Red is marvelously specific about its setting and characters, but that specificity doesn’t exclude people who haven’t been a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl living in Toronto in 2002. Instead, “Bao” director Domee Shi’s feature debut offers these details to immerse you in her character’s world — and what a magical world it is, ranking among Pixar’s best creations. 

Mei Lee (voice of Rosalie Chiang) is an overachieving student who leaves her trio of devoted friends every day to rush home to help her mom (Sandra Oh) run their family’s temple in Chinatown, basically checking every “perfect daughter” box. Mei’s mom doesn’t feel that far removed from the loving (but, uh, overbearing) mother in Shi’s “Bao,” and Mei is rightfully beginning to feel stifled — along with all the other feelings that begin to bubble over around the age of 13. 

However, Mei doesn’t have the typical experience of a tween girl going through ch-ch-changes; thanks to a bargain made by her ancestor, all the women in her lineage turn into red pandas with any extreme emotion when they come of age. Mei feels everything: all-consuming love for boy band 4*Town, pure rage at school bully Tyler (Tristan Allerick Chen), a squishy crush on 17-year-old Devon (Addison Chandler), and utter shame at her mom’s overprotective involvement in her life. So to her mortification, she keeps morphing into the scarlet monster at every turn. However, her mother promises that she can forever stop the transformation with a ritual, if she can only keep the beast at bay until the right time.

Turning Red isn’t purely about Mei getting her period — though her mom initially thinks that’s the big change Mei is worried about, instead of, you know, turning into a giant red panda — but it is more explicit about menstruation than a Disney/Pixar movie has ever been allowed to be, with boxes of pads and mention of the “red peony.” It’s still subtle enough that it won’t replace — or even catalyze — the sex talk for younger viewers, and it will likely fly right over their tiny heads for any parents concerned they aren’t ready yet. But Turning Red features a refreshing frankness about how bodies change in adolescence, from unexpected raging hormones to newly stinky pits, and seeing this universal experience on screen somehow feels revolutionary. 

While this is absolutely a movie about the specific experience of being a teenage girl during puberty, it isn’t only that. It’s also about not being afraid to be your authentic, weirdo self. Mei has her equally odd — and absolutely wonderful — friends Miriam (Ava Morse), Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), and Abby (Hyein Park), but many of the other kids see her as strange. With the crushing weight of her mother’s expectations of what her daughter should be, Mei also doesn’t feel like she can be herself even at home. She finds freedom and calm with her friends, who are her haven from pretending to be the well-behaved, straight-A student who doesn’t care about boys.

The girls’ crushes on Devon and boy band 4*Town are among the film’s many delights. Mei draws doodles about Devon in her notebook, leading to some of the movie’s funniest and most mortifying scenes. Every moment surrounding 4*Town — from the nonexistent personalities of the group’s lesser members to the extremely catchy original songs by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell — perfectly recreates what it was like to love this kind of music and these kinds of guys in the ‘90s and ‘00s. (Jordan Knight, forever.)

While Turning Red is clearly fantasy, it still feels grounded in the real world, thanks to details like these. Shi and co-writer Julia Cho finely capture aspects of the era, with the girls’ fashion, Mei’s Tamagotchi, and the “da bomb” slang. The streets of Toronto feel true to life (even when there’s a giant red panda bounding over the city’s roofs), and Shi doesn’t shy away from using Canadian phrasing like “grade eight” and “tuque.” However, what really adds to the film’s sense of authenticity is all the elements of Mei’s cultural identity as a Chinese-Canadian girl living in Chinatown, from the Lee’s food (unsurprisingly, the bao practically play a supporting role here) to the TV show Mei watches with her mom. None of it feels forced either; Shi is bringing her own identity to the screen, and it’s so welcome.

The animation is as gorgeous as you’d expect from a Pixar movie, with the red panda action and the expressiveness of Mei’s face standing out. It’s a shame that Turning Red is getting its premiere on Disney+ instead of on the big screen. More people will get to see it sooner, but there’s so much vibrancy throughout the film, as well as an epic climax, that it  deserves to be seen on a screen that’s larger than Mei’s red panda alter ego. 

Shi’s first official credit was as a story artist on Inside Out, which feels fitting given both films’ focus on emotions and inner life. For her first full-length film, Shi has made a movie equally as thoughtful and creative as that Pixar favorite, and it’s just as likely to induce Bing Bong-levels of tears. Turning Red is emblematic of the animation studio at its best, full of emotional intelligence and creative innovation, as likely to please children as it is adults. 

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