Released just as the American populace is getting over their rejuvenated fascination with the power of the sea, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken feels destined to be forgotten – an imperceptible blip on a crowded summer movie calendar. Not helping is that it’s coming off the heels of one of the most successful and innovative films of the year (animated or not), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, as well as Disney/Pixar’s Elemental, whose full-throttle marketing campaign has seen a more tepid box-office response. Ruby Gillman has had much less of a push and seems primed to face a struggle connecting with audiences.
Such a fate seems appropriate for Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, an aquatic, animated, all-ages romp full of familiar lessons and a few too many peppy pop songs that plays things so down-the-middle as to become perfectly forgettable.
Though in practice director Kirk DeMicco’s film can’t escape being overly familiar kids-movie fare, the screenplay (co-written by DeMicco, Pam Brady, Elliott DiGuiseppi, and Brian C. Brown) has aspirations to subvert tropes and expectations. The titular Ruby (Condor), in all her lanky and self-conscious awkwardness, struggles to fit in to the town of Oceanside. In fact, her whole family is trying to convince the town’s populace they belong: Their origin is of the water, and their blue skin and fishy features are plenty perceptible (don’t worry, if anyone asks, they’re just from Canada).
Still, Ruby doesn’t know the full truth of her lineage and quickly has to face it head-on after an attempted promposal to her human crush Connor (Young-White) lands her in the ocean, exactly where her mom, Agatha (Collette), forbids her from ever going. There, she discovers her inheritance from her estranged Grandmamah (Fonda). Not only that, but the krakens are at perpetual war with the ambiguously evil mermaids (there’s also a special trident that they have to protect or something). That’s where the complications come in, as Ruby has just befriended the popular and pretty Chelsea Van Der Zee (Murphy), a mermaid at school who reciprocates Ruby’s solace in finding a fellow sea-dweller.
This is where Ruby Gillman wants to turn archetypes on their heads. In this movie, it’s the monstrous kraken that gets to be the princess, and the graceful mermaids who need to be dealt with. It’s no accident that the redheaded Chelsea is designed to bear a striking resemblance to that of Ariel from The Little Mermaid: She doesn’t have to be the hero anymore, so there’s room for outsiders like Ruby.
It’s an intriguing concept, but one the film doesn’t do enough with. The characters are all defined by broad traits that end up relegating them to anonymity – the unlikely hero, the overbearing mother, the pure comic relief guy (Richardson as Uncle Brill). No one has a memorable personality. The locales and animation lean toward nondescript as well, with neither Oceanside nor the depths below it offering much in the way of immersion into this world. DreamWorks’ house animation style is nice, with fun character designs and lots of elastic movement, but nothing ever pops.
Will Ruby Gillman’s target audience care about any of this? Anecdotally, it seemed to keep the attention of kids at my screening without mustering much excitement. As for the parents, there’s a feeling they were just happy to have the kiddos entertained for 91 minutes. That has its own value, but I’d say we’re long past the point for a film like this of that being the only expectation.
This article appears in The Books Issue.