Oh em gee: you know turn-of-the-millennium nostalgia is reaching mainstream saturation point when the Pixar content factory tap into it for their 25th and latest feature, a coming-of-age tale set in a baby-pink 2002 of flip phones, platform sneakers, and hormone-triggering boy bands.
This is the world of 13-year-old Mei (voiced by Rosalie Chiang), an eighth-grade overachiever and secretly boy-crazy teen who – in a not unrelated turn of events – also happens to shapeshift into a giant, emotionally erratic red panda.
Turning Red, which arrived on Disney+ this week, is something of a personal work for Domee Shi, the Chinese-Canadian filmmaker who charmed audiences with her Oscar-winning 2018 short film Bao, and who now becomes the first woman to single-handedly helm a Pixar feature.
Like Brave, the last Pixar movie to involve a woman director – a whole decade ago – Shi's film feels more emotionally specific than the focus-grouped appeal of so many of the studio's recent efforts, dialling down the high-concept broadness to zero in on the turbulent relationship between mothers and teenage daughters.
It might surprise some audiences (and parents of younger kids drawn to the cuddly image of a goofy red panda) to discover that Turning Red is also the first Pixar movie to explicitly address sexual awakening.
In fact, the film is positively teeming with teen hormones.
The story pivots on four nerdy teenage girls' attempt to attend the biggest night of their young lives, a Toronto super-stadium concert being given by their idols, 4*Town – a dreamy boy band cross between *NSYNC and DuJour, whose songs, full of hilariously smooth harmonies and orch hits, were composed by Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell.
"This isn't just our first concert, this is our first step into womanhood," Mei tells her friends.
But for Mei, an honours student who feels duty bound to family tradition, her passion for pop – and for boys – is something to be kept secret from her pinched, disciplinarian mother Ming (Sandra Oh).
When Ming discovers one of Mei's fanciful notebook sketches – an eroticised portrait of the local convenience store doofus, complete with bucket hat and merman tail – she marches her daughter right into an embarrassing moment that would make any teenager cringe for eternity.
The next morning, Mei discovers she's 8-foot-tall and furry, a condition of extreme overexcitement that can only be suppressed by calming thoughts.
"Did the red peony bloom?" asks Ming, when the mortified Mei refuses to come out of her room.
Yes, Pixar's latest isn't just a parable about learning to be yourself and following your heart – it's a straight-up analogy for the growing pains of puberty, period gags and all.
Turns out Mei's transformation isn't some freak occurrence but a kind of generational power inherited by the Lee women.
"It feels so good to let it out, so free," says Mei's imperious grandma (Wai Ching Ho), in just one of the many lines – penned by Shi and co-writer Julia Cho – that are borderline ribald in their suggestiveness.
Mei is told that the beast can be contained via an ancient ceremony conducted on the red moon, but pretty soon she realises that turning into a big fluffy red panda is a great party trick – and better still, a way to help her and her crew raise enough money to go to the all-important 4*Town show.
Cue Mei's red panda rocking a teen house party to the sound of Bootylicious.
Turning Red is refreshingly low-stakes stuff for Pixar, which is increasingly where the studio seems to be at their best.
The animation titans have spent the better part of the last decade churning out assembly-line sequels with canned, one-size-fits-all emotions (see: Toy Story 4) and promising high concepts slathered in reductive sentimentality (Soul), but Turning Red keeps the dramatic focus tight, the dilemmas relatable.
It's essentially a teen movie with a supernatural red panda.
The studio arguably hasn't produced anything this affecting since the overlooked Brave, another mother-daughter story directed by a woman – Brenda Chapman, at least until she was unceremoniously ousted by the Pixar boys' club – and featuring a tempestuous, flame-haired teenager.
Shi's film takes the conflict between a rebellious daughter and a strict mother and blows it up to comic proportions, giving Ming an inspired, kaiju-sized stand-off with her greatest enemy: the boy band of Mei's dreams.
Turning Red's cultural specificity is a huge asset, of course, with Shi infusing the tone and texture of the film with a sense of her own history – from Mei's lively coterie of yammering aunts to the traditional Chinese design elements that flavour the animation.
While the characters are of a piece with Pixar's typically rubbery style, Shi and her animators craft some distinctively luminous scenes around the red moon ritual, with its trans-dimensional portals, levitating spirits and red pandas that sail through forests like dragons.
The mix of high-tech computer animation and ancient lore speaks to a film that wants it both ways – be yourself, but honour your parents and tradition.
Considering the unruly can of emotions it opens up, it's a shame that Turning Red doesn't leave more of a mess on the table, instead retreating into Pixar's comfort-food platitudes.
But then, the studio isn't in the business of leaving life's inexplicable loose ends hanging. All the better to babysit kids too young to know any different, and parents too afraid to confront anything else.
Turning Red is streaming now on Disney+.
