#Turning red is a good movie and pt barnum can suck my cock

[school-sanctioned-movie-bullying]

Turning Red Defense Post

It has come to my attention that some people think this blog is just me whining. I can see why those people think that, because it is true. I love to whine, and it is what I am good at. But there comes a time when one must venture out of her comfort zone. 

In this post I am praising Turning Red, a movie that I like very much but that many other people seem to hate. My reasons for this are threefold. For one, I am running out of movies to complain about; two, I really like Turning Red; and three, my professor said I can’t just bitch about movies anymore, so my classic complaining style posts are hence extinct. 

 Before I get into my praise for the film, I want to address the common criticisms I have seen people make of it. I perused the one-star reviews on Google, and the most common complaints seemed to be “it’s cringe-worthy," “the characters were annoying," and “it has inappropriate themes.”

 The reviews that said the movie was cringe-worthy mostly said so because of the main characters. The protagonist of the movie is a thirteen-year-old girl named Meilin Lee, whom many reviews had stated to be very annoying. I don’t know about anyone else, but when I was thirteen years old, I was absolutely insufferable. Cringe would be putting lightly how annoying I was. Comparably, I found Mei to be a sweet, if not dorky, tween with a similarly sympathetically dorky friend group. They were cringeworthy, but so is almost every thirteen-year-old out there, so really, the movie is just realistic. 

Many reviews also found Mei Lin’s mother to be overbearing and weird, which I found to be true as well, but then that was kind of the point. Her mother is not the villain of the story by any means, but she is a flawed character. One of the most touching moments of the movie came in the form of Mei Lin helping her mother overcome those flaws. If her mother had been perfect from the start, we would have missed out on that moment.

Aside from the characters, the negative reviews for this movie took offense to the “inappropriate” themes, namely the fact that periods were brought up and the fact that the protagonist rebels against her parents. The whole concept of Mei turning into a giant red panda is supposed to be a metaphor for puberty and growing up, and as it is such a huge part of puberty for girls, there was a quick mention of periods. This came in a very quick scene where Mei Lin’s mother brought out a stash of pads when she thought her daughter had gotten her period.

It was an extremely brief moment, but evidently, that was long enough to get some people upset. I was personally thrilled to see that periods were being brought up in a normal way, and I think it is a step in the right direction for this movie to have that scene. Some parents want to take the puberty talk at their own pace, but the mention of periods in this movie is brief and vague enough that most parents should be able to sweep it under the rug until they want to discuss it with their children. 

 As for Mei Lin rebelling against her parents, I am truthfully confused as to why this movie specifically is guilty of that message. Plenty of other Disney or Pixar movies have the main characters going against their parents. To name a few: The Little Mermaid, Brave, Mulan, and Pocahontas. I thought that Turning Red handled Mei Lin growing up and learning to be her own person very nicely, while still portraying her overbearing mother as sympathetic.

 I can see why a lot of people don’t like this movie. It was risky, and it certainly was not made to please everyone, but I think much of the hate this movie gets is undeserved. I, and many others, really enjoyed Turning Red. Despite the plethora of negative reviews I read, there were more five-star reviews than one-star reviews by a good amount. 

I do truly understand where the desire to loudly hate a movie comes from; I will crap on The Greatest Showman at any opportunity. But it is necessary to remember that the movies you hate may simply not have been written to please you. There are, for some reason, people out there who really like The Greatest Showman, despite the numerous reasons I have for reviling it. And there are people out there who hate Turning Red, even when I think it was one of the best Pixar movies made in some time.