Brief Story Line
Set in Toronto, Canada in the year 2002, a 13 year old girl named Meilin Lee (Rosalie Chiang) was an over achiever student and best friends with Miriam (Ava Morse), Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan - Never Have I Ever TV series etc) and Abby (Hyein Park). Mei was living with her high demanding mother Ming (Sandra Oh - Raya and the Last Dragon, Killing Eve TV series etc) and calm father Jin (Orion Lee) and did not have lots of spare time to have fun like kids her age.
Things gotten really complicated for Mei when one day she somehow magically turned into a big red Panda and could only return to herself by calming down. While dealing with this problem, Mei and her best friends were trying to get enough money to buy tickets for the concert of their most favorite boyband called 4*Town without her mother's consent.
So what was the reason for Mei's sudden transformation? And how would she deal with this while trying to be in the concert with her friends? Find them all in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Like all previous Disney Pixar movies, this one also has superiority over other computer animated productions. The animation were very beautiful with real life-like expressions on the faces and the lips movement that we could even see in line with the words spoken. One of the most awesome scenes for me was during the time when Mei's father was cooking with the vegetables cutting and pouring of sauce, spices & herbs looked so real. And the quality of the animation was truly felt throughout the whole movie.
This movie was really entertaining for me and my wife as there were lots of hilarious scenes involving Mei's behavior as 13 year old girl with her adolescence problems. I think I laughed the hardest during the time when she was trying to avoid eye contact with her mother, and many other scenes as well. I thought the humor here were wonderful in general and my wife also laughed many times during the film. Oh, Mei and her friends adoring the boy band & trying to do whatever they could to see their show was quite realistic and culturally relevant.
The comedy situation here mostly arising from Mei's transformation to the red Panda, though sometimes we also felt sympathetic towards her for having such experience. Her eyes when looking at something cute were truly priceless. Looking at Mei's friendship with her 3 best friends warm our hearts too. In addition, Mei's relationship with her mother was also the major highlight in the movie. There were obviously some touching moments, though they were not the absolutely emotional type (at least for me since my wife was still quite affected by them).
Funny thing about the boyband 4*Town as I thought they were real since during the closing credits, there were mention of them singing 3 songs. But after reading on the internet, I found out that it was actually a fictional band created just for the movie. The three songs here were Nobody Like You, 1True Love and U Know What's Up which were played quite frequently in the background as well as during the concert. They were all written by Billie Eilish & Finneas O'Connell (who wrote & sang the OST for No Time to Die).
This movie was directed by Domee Shi in her full feature directorial debut. She previously directed short movie Bao which Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2019. No wonder there was a slight familiarity during that cooking scene. Domee Shi was also the story artist for several Pixar movies such as Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur and Toy Story 4, so she had quite significant experience in doing these family friend films. Oh this movie was highly regarded by critics with their praise on story, humor, animation and use of culture. Yes the Chinese culture felt quite strong here. Btw, the movie had a brief post end credit scene in case you're wondering.
Overall, this was a movie suitable for whole family. It was definitely fun for kids of younger age with the comedic situation related to big red Panda and should be heart warming enough for parents and their adolescent kids. It has lots of humor that would brighten your day and surprisingly quite powerful climax. The voice actresses and actors were mostly great, providing depth in the characters. There were other support cast of Wai Ching Ho (Madame Gao in Daredevil TV series) as Mei's grand mother and James Hong as Mr. Gao the local elder. So if you want to enjoy yourselves watching fun & heart warming comedy with strong cultural reference, then this one is definitely for you. I bet you could not help yourself to have emotional attachment with Mei.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment