By Rachell Carbajal
Disney Pixar recently released another animated movie called Turning Red. This film shows the struggles of growing up, specifically being a preteen (13 years old) and how puberty affects emotions, physical, and mental body of the main character: Meilin Lee. It also comes with a twist—whenever Meilin has a large amount of emotions she turns into a huge red panda (because of a Chinese folk tale). Although this film got 94 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, many teens and older audiences didn’t enjoy the film. Many people say they couldn’t enjoy the film because it gave them second-hand embarrassment, or the characters weren’t accurate enough for the old-school style of the 2000s. This film took place in Toronto, Canada and in the year 2002, which could be the reason why it is a little different than taking place in the US. In my opinion, although there were some scenes that gave me some embarrassing flashbacks, I definitely think that was the sole purpose of the film. When you’re a teen or a pre-teen, you tend do stupid things to impress somebody, like your crush. In most cases, you end up failing miserably, so you take on something else to distract yourself. Similarly in the movie it shows a boy band, named 4Town, in which Meilin and her best friends adore. It’s the same thing with most generations, who idolized Justin Bieber, The Backstreet Boys, One Direction, etc. when they were young and would do anything to go see them in person with their friends. To me, Turning Red not only shows an accurate depiction of pre-teens, because of the whole story itself. Additionally, this film, in my opinion, also shows another important aspect, relationships with your family, especially your parents. Usually, when you’re younger (5-12 years olds) you obey and have similar morals, beliefs, etc as your parents because they surround you so much during these years. But when you begin to be in your pre-teen or teen years you have more freedom, the world is more out to see, so other things influence you and affect your previous way of thinking. Which causes rebellion, towards your family or friends. That’s exactly what Meilin Lee goes through in this movie. It’s great to see more accurate ways in films of how we’ve all acted and will continue to act.