Finally got to watch Turning Red over the weekend. First of all, I have never been to Toronto and I am not Chinese but if you don't think this movie was relatable at all you were never thirteen or possibly you were raised in a sci-fi creche without parents. I'm looking at you, Guy Who Has Already Been Torn To Shreds By The Internet.
The secondhand embarrassment was real, and hard to watch, and my mom didn't even Do That. I mean, she embarrassed me in plenty of other ways. Which is probably why it was hard to watch. But I loved Meilin and her friends. I was never super into boy bands - the closest I came was probably my toe-dip into Hanson fandom - but the climax involving the POWER~OF~SINGING~WITH~YOUR~HEART being a concert was so good.
As a pagan, I am always thrilled by media that show my kid people who are doing religious things that look even a little bit like what we do.
Bug was terrified a couple of times, mostly when Meilin first transformed and when she was fighting with her mom. Bug and her mom are very close too, though in a very different way, and I think the idea of fighting with one's mom upset her more than I was expecting. She was worried at the climax that Meilin's mom was dead and I explained to her that parents only die in the first fifteen minutes of a kid's movie.
(She recently saw Land Before Time for the first time... it's been long enough that I don't remember how far in you get before Dying Mom Trauma.)
"Don't hold back. For anyone. The farther you go, the prouder I'll be." -Yeah, I sobbed big fat Dad Tears at this line. This is the part I keep thinking about.