Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken is a PG-rated film from Dreamworks Animation, the good folk behind all of those Shrek movies and such. For some people, this will be enough information to assure them that they can take their kids—particularly those who have already seen the likes of The Little Mermaid and Elemental but who may be a tad too young for the likes of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny—to it and not have to worry about bad language, gory violence or anything even remotely smacking of sexual matters. That’s great but alas, it is also devoid of other things that younger viewers might actually like to see in a film—stuff like wit, an original story and a unique visual style chief among them. As a result, the whole thing is little more than bland, formulaic pap and perhaps the only good thing about it, at least from the perspective of the little kids that are its target audience, is that the older viewers who elected to take them to it on the basis of its ostensibly safe nature will almost certain be as bored and fidgety as they are.
Ruby (Lana Condor), is a shy teenager who lives in the seaside town of Oceanside and is trying to negotiate the usual adolescent issues—primarily her desire to ask secret crush Connor (Jaboukie Young-White) to prom. Alas, it is being held on a ship in the ocean and her mother, Agatha (Toni Collette), has strictly forbidden her from ever setting foot in the ocean. Nevertheless, her friends convince her to ask him anyway but her modest attempt at a promposal results in knocking her intended into the water, forcing her to jump in and rescue him. When she hits the water, however, she finds herself transforming into nothing less than a kraken and while she is able to save Connor, she tries to hide so that no one discovers that she has become a monster. Her mom discovers her and manages to calm her down enough so that she returns to human form before telling her that she is the descendant of a long line of kraken. At the same time, Ruby’s heretofore unknown kraken uncle Brill (Sam Richardson), alerted by her transformation, arrives at her house to bring her to visit her Grandmamah (Jane Fonda), who is no less than the Warrior Queen of the Seven Seas.
Not surprisingly, Ruby is upset with her mother from keeping all of this from her and sneaks out to visit Grandmamah beneath the sea, where she learns that kraken, contrary to legend and certain Ray Harryhausen movies, are the noble heroes of the sea charged with protecting it from their fiercest rivals, the vile and monstrous mermaids. She also learns that since her mother rejected both the throne and ocean life after finding and hiding an all-powerful trident that is the only thing mermaids can use to defeat kraken, Grandmamah wants her to one day take the throne. While swimming back to her regular home, Ruby stumbles into a trap laid by kraken-obsessed old salt Gordon Lighthouse (Will Forte) but is rescued by Chelsea (Annie Murphy), the seemingly perfect new girl at school who just happens to also be a mermaid. The two become besties and decide to find the aforementioned trident as a way of uniting krakens and mermaids and bringing their long-standing feud to an end. Spoiler Alert—this plan does not go well and Ruby must use her new-found powers to save the day, her family and all of Oceanside.
Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken finds Dreamworks once again indulging in their penchant for making animated films that take potshots at chief rival Disney, which began back when they launched their premiere effort Antz to directly compete with the strikingly similar A Bug’s Life and then used the Shrek films as an excuse to make merciless fun of many of the animated fairy tale tropes they introduced over the decades. Here, the film is clearly meant to be a flipped version of Disney favorite The Little Mermaid—which just happened to have a highly-hyped remake come out just a month or so ago—and also bears similarities to such recent Pixar productions as Luca and Turning Red. In the cases of Antz and at least the first Shrek, they worked because they felt reasonably fresh and innovative thanks to the look, style and humor on display throughout.
The trouble with Ruby Gillman is that, once you get beyond the quirky title and oddball premise, there isn’t much of anything else of interest to be had outside of the occasional inspired line of dialogue . Using an animated fantasy narrative to serve as a metaphor for the perils of female adolescence is an idea that was mined so effectively in Turning Red that what transpires here can’t help but come across as limp and lame by comparison. Although certainly fast and frantic enough, there just isn’t much of interest going on—my guess is that most younger viewers will be able to see where this story is going pretty early on—and starts to drag severely in the latter reels. Visually, the film is bright and flashy enough—it certain looks more appealing than the oddly murky sights on display in The Little Mermaid—but nothing we see is memorable enough to stick in the mind. The vocal performances are okay but again, none of them are particularly distinctive or interesting—hearing Jane Fonda voicing a mighty kraken is admittedly odd at first but she doesn’t get much of anything to do and the strangeness of her presence is a conceit that I suspect will mean precious little to the target audience.
Ultimately, Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken is too slight and meaningless to get too grumpy with—its biggest sin is that it is completely forgettable. If all you are looking for is a patently inoffensive 90-minute visual pacifier for the kids, I suppose it will do. However, don’t you think that those kids deserve a little better than that. Kids are smart and know when something is working and when something isn’t and my guess is that most of them will realize pretty quickly that this is little more than a project made of bits and pieces cobbled from things they liked in the past and elect to stick with those previous variations instead.