It's Panda Monium!

Hormones, boy bands and red pandas collide in Turning Red, Pixar’s take on the Hulk

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BEING 13 WAS NEVER EASY AT THE BEST OF times, but most of us didn’t have to worry about spontaneous, uncontrollable transformations into a wild animal. Spare a thought, then, for the teen protagonist of Pixar’s latest movie: Mei finds herself turning into an oversized red panda whenever she gets angry or excited.

“As I did more research about red pandas, I found a lot of interesting parallels between them and the character in the movie,” Turning Red director Domee Shi tells Red Alert. “They’re native to China, they’re hairy and they’re smelly, and they sleep a lot – as all teenagers do. They’re also very attached to their moms in the beginning of life, but they then become very independent later. Eventually I kind of wove together this story about red pandas and teen girls.”

While Turning Red is Shi’s first feature-length movie, she already has an Oscar to her name thanks to acclaimed Pixar short “Bao”. That told the story of an old woman who adopts a dumpling boy, and in many ways,