There were two big releases this week, and they were both onto streaming services. Apparently, nothing wanted to go up against Batman in its second week, which is probably a wise choice but sad, nonetheless. Surprisingly Disney decided to release its third Pixar movie without a theatrical release. The first two that were releases straight to streaming were Soul and Luca, which received mixed acclaim in the Pixar rankings. Soul being the better of the two, but it seemed to pack a more adult focused punch. The newest release is Turning Red, and so far, it has been getting good ratings, but not on the Pixar level of great. The other release this week went straight to Netflix, and that movie was The Adam Project, the new Sci-Fi Ryan Reynolds movie. It is better than the recent projects Reynolds has been a part of, but that is not saying much, but both of these films had a large focus on family dynamics.
Turning Red is about Mei Mei, a 13-year-old girl, who is going through a change in her life, due to magic that runs in her family bloodline, that initially seems like a curse. Mei wakes up one day, and she is a giant red panda, typically red pandas are the size of racoons, but in this movie, they range from the size of a bear to the size of Godzilla. Mei has a hard time dealing with this change initially, but if she really focuses and calms her mind, then she turns back into her normal self. Her main goal in this film is to see 4 Town, a boy band, with her friends, so they decide to use Mei as a red panda to their advantage. They start to sell merchandise and charge for pictures, but Mei’s mom is very protective and does not want this to happen, and she does not want to lose her daughter. They have a very close relationship, but once the change starts, their relationship starts to faulter.
The Adam Project is about a future Adam, Ryan Reynolds, traveling back in time, to try and prevent his dad from making a huge discovery involving time travel. To help stop his dad, he teams up with the younger version of himself. This involves getting the younger version of himself involved in the time travel. When he meets the younger version of himself, Adam’s dad has already died, so they have to time travel again to get close to the point of discovery. In the future there is a lady who is taking advantage of her time travel capabilities, and they must stop her at all costs. It is hard to describe time travel movies, so many moving parts.
The new Pixar movie has a heavy focus on change, whereas typical Pixar movies seemed to have a strong focus on being digestible by children of all ages, the recent films, like Soul and this one seems to have a stronger focus on people that are of an older age. Soul’s main focus was on finding your purpose in life, and it being okay to be constantly changing your purpose, or to go out and try to do your own thing instead of falling into the pressures of society or family expectations. Turning Red is similar in a way, I can see it working incredibly well for teens/preteens watching it with their parents, and then it might get a conversation started. It does not shy away from the puberty conversation, and it mainly focuses on the female gender, but it can also be applied to males as well. There is a little bit of period talk and talk of tampons, that may go over younger viewers’ heads, but it does stand out in what are typical kids movies.
Mei and her mom have an incredible relationship at the beginning of the movie, but when Mei goes through the change, their relationship starts to change as well. Mei goes from warm and committed to distant, and it was not only affecting her, but it also affected her mother. Mei felt like she needed more distance because she could not be honest with her mother about her feelings anymore, and her mother was also damaging the relationship by not allowing her daughter to be honest with her. Her mother would have judged her strongly, because Mei was not living up to the high expectations. Expectations are good, but if they cannot be met, it can more debilitating than motivating. So since there was a lack of communication in the end it ended up hurting both of them, instead of helping to grow their relationship.
There was a similar problem among the characters in The Adam Project, young Adam and his mom had a contentious relationship after his father’s death. When his father died, Adam had a colder relationship with his mother, and his coldness to her also resulted in a harsher vibe from her as well. If they had been willing to be more open with each other, then their relationship would have been much better. They were both clearly hurt by the death of Adam’s father, but their lack of ability to be honest with each other was detrimental to their relationship. Older Adam was able to see it, but younger Adam was not able to see the damage it had placed upon the relationship with his mom. Losing a parent is an incredibly hard thing, and the relationship one has with the parent that remains is an incredibly important thing, at least that is my experience, it may not always be open communication about the loss, but getting through it together in your own way does help to lessen the problem.
This movie hit well when they were focused on the emotional notes of the grief. It came in a variety of ways. It came in the form of the relationship between young Adam and his mom as mentioned above, but it also came in the form of older Adam interacting with his mom without the mom knowing that it was older Adam being the one interacting with her. Although at this moment, Adam’s mom did not know it was future Adam, as the viewer it was a truly touching moment, because we knew what she was going through, and that one day it would be okay. It also worked well when young and old Adam were having moments with their dad, and they knew that these moments would not last, but that made them embrace it even more.
It was an interesting format in which to tell the story, because the Sci-Fi action although necessary to tell the story did not seem to fit in with the overall theme of grieving. So it was a little convoluted. So the best parts of the movie were when they were focusing in on the emotional aspect of the journey over the action portion, but I am unsure of how they could have told the story in a better format.
After watching Euphoria recently, I feel like Turning Red could be the movie preteen Pixar version of the show. Obviously, Pixar is not going to make an overly graphic movie like Euphoria, but creating an animated film that covers many of the troubles of puberty in an easy to digest way could be extremely helpful to kids in this age group. It makes the story of change easily accessible to all, and it tells it in a fun way. Also like Euphoria, there is a strong emphasis on the relationships the characters have with each other. Some of these relationships are more complex than others, and sometimes the movie basks more in the drama, but it does it well. There are Godzilla level monsters, but the themes go much deeper than a typical monster level film. So although I do not find this film at a level with other of Pixar’s top level films, I could see it being just as important or more so than the others that they have made.
Parental relationships are complex, and everyone has a different relationship with their parents due to their background experience, but watching movies like Turning Red and The Adam Project can be helpful in exploring one’s own relationship with their parents, but it can also be helpful in examining a relationship in how others interacted with their parents. The more information there is about interactions between parents and children there are, the better the world will be. This will help children be able to express how they are feeling to their parents if they see it on the big screen, or it might help parents relate more to their children, if they see a representation of their relationship on the big screen. Either way, as a child or an adult, I could see these films helping to create a conversation between child and parent that could be extremely helpful in growing their relationship. I gave Turning Red 3.5 Stars, and I gave The Adam Project 3 stars.
Other Movies This Week:
Rounders: Matt Damon plays a genius card player, who loses it all, so he starts over without gambling in it, but it keeps calling his name. So he leaves all the good parts of his life behind to give it another try. A story about chasing your dreams, even if it means throwing everything else away.
Winning Time, the new HBO show about the Lakers, is also very good. It is a nice mix of comedy and serious. It is over the top at times intentionally, but if it wants to be serious, it is effective in that way too. They also filmed it in a way that makes it look old and almost documentary like, but it has received some backlash for their portrayal of some of the real life people like Jerry West.
New Rankings:
Turning Red: 3.5 Stars
The Adam Project: 3 Stars
Rounders: 3 Stars
Comments