Turning Red: Disney+ dives into uncharted adolescence

Turning Red is the latest Pixar feature to drop exclusively on Disney+ on March 11th. It is already garnering favourable reviews from critics and evoking signature Pixar emotions through a story about the most malignant of conditions, puberty. Couple that with a stern Asian mother and you have a great recipe for relatability and raucous laughter. 

Like its predecessor, Luca, Pixar is now focusing on smaller communal and cultural stories rather than going for larger than life concepts to opine about the human condition.

The film takes place in Toronto in 2002. The protagonist Mei, is a straight-laced, high achieving student with a supportive cast of quirky friends: Miriam (Ava Morse), Abby (Hyein Park) and Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan). The most dominant relationship in Mei's life however is with her mother, voiced by the legendary Sandra Oh. She's a headstrong but loving parent whose high bar for her baby girl is kind of stifling the already high-strung Mei.

The end of her world arrives in the guise of a popular boy band named 4-Town, whom she writes about in her diary and keeps hidden from her mother.