Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken review: Animated tale needs to release the originality
Jane Fonda, Toni Collette, and Lana Condor lead a colorful take on kraken lore that struggles to find its footing—on land or sea
Film Reviews Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken
Speaking at his Annecy Master Class earlier this month, Academy Award-winner Guillermo del Toro bemoaned what he saw as the ills afflicting contemporary (mostly American) animation. He was particularly despondent about how character emotions in much of commercial animation have been “codified into a sort of teenage rom-com, almost emoji-style behavior,” calling it “emotional pornography.” Del Toro’s words kept echoing in my head as I watched DreamWorks’ latest animated offering, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, a perfectly adequate fable about a teen girl who discovers she’s a descendant of a line of warrior queen krakens. It’s a discovery that throws the final days of her high school experience in the fictional town of Oceanside into disarray.
For despite being a blue-haired, blue-skinned, gill-having, non-human girl, Ruby (Lana Condor), like the rest of her family, spends her days passing as human. That mostly requires hiding her gills with a turtleneck, standing up straight as if she has a spine, and warding off suspicions by claiming that the Gillmans come from, uh, Canada. Fifteen years in at Oceanside and that’s clearly worked for Flo and Arthur Gillman (Toni Collette and Colman Domingo), who are nevertheless quite cagey about why it is their kraken family now lives ashore. It all reeks of a broad metaphor about going through changes as a teenage girl that structures much of the film. Said metaphor is set in motion when Ruby dives into the ocean for the first time to save her crush from drowning after a promposal goes hilariously wrong. It’s there that she grows to be a giant-sized kraken with three tentacles, as her own sense of alienation is made visible and unavoidable. How will she fit in with her friends at school now? How will she ever get Connor to go to prom with her? How will she ever lay claim to normalcy?
What follows is a rather straightforward tale about growing into one’s own. Set against a quirky mythic tale that involves a kraken queen (played by none other than Jane Fonda), a totally super duper cool new girl in school (played with gusto by Schitt’s Creek’s Annie Murphy), and the increasingly fraught relationship between Ruby and her mother, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken is amusing if altogether quite slight. The emotional resonance of the piece depends on well-worn tropes about “mother knows best” and “blending in to fit in is okay (until it’s not)” that feel particularly facile. That is especially the case when delivered in between plenty of exposition-heavy scenes (some of which use YouTube-like clips as helpful visual aids) as well as one too many music-driven montages (set to a number of not particularly memorable pop ditties). And that’s on top of the sassy sitcom rhythms of its dialogue. This is a world where Ruby calls Murphy’s Chelsea her “super sea girl bestie” and jokes with Connor (Jaboukie Young-White) that he’s her Alge-bae (or maybe her Alge-bro?) while talking about their math tutoring sessions. And, yes, there is a “release the kraken!”-style joke here, in case you were worried.
Which is to say, while there is plenty to enjoy here, the tone and tenor of this DreamWorks flick struggles to straddle the line between the kookiness of its premise (I mean, this family is called GILL-man, get it?) and the sincerity of its emotion (here’s where Fonda and Collette’s voice work does some serious heavy lifting). Visually, at least, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken is a treat. Playing with the Play-Doh-like plasticity of the medium (even when it makes its titular creatures look, at times, like neon gummy-like Sea Monkeys), director Kirk DeMicco and co-director Faryn Pearl constantly find ways of making you wish you could pause to truly take in their immersive world-building. An early scene featuring a smorgasbord of promposals, for instance, may come close to overloading your senses but it nevertheless begs to be dissected frame by frame to savor every one of its jokes. One wishes such playful inventiveness was as evident in the film’s final climactic battle which can’t help but pale in comparison to the similarly staged scene in 1989’s The Little Mermaid (and not just because it also features a mermaid, a trident, a ship in peril, and a stormy backdrop).
Thus, enjoyable as it may be, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken never quite rises above its straightforward title and one-note sounding premise—which the film still spends an inordinate amount of time setting up and explaining. Whatever emotional heft the pic may aim to harness is lost amid glib jokes, overly complicated mythic lore, and ultimately, pat platitudes about embracing who you were always meant to be.
Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken opens in theaters on June 30
31 Comments
Matty Beniers, who was a teenager at the start of the season, just won NHL rookie of the year for the Seattle Kraken.
“And the increasingly fraught relationship between Ruby and her mother (Toni Collete)““DON’T you swear at me, you little shit! Don’t you EVER raise your voice at me! I am your mother! You understand? All I do is worry and slave and defend you, and all I get back is that fucking face on your face! So full of disdain and resentment and always so annoyed! Well, now your Kraken Secret is revealed! And I know it was an accident and I know you’re in pain and I wish could take that away for you. I WISH I could shield you from the knowledge that you did what you did, but your Kraken Secret is revealed! Forever! And what a waste… if it could’ve maybe brought us together, or something, if you could’ve just said “I’m sorry” or faced up to what happened, maybe then we could do something with this, but you can’t take responsibility for anything! So, now I can’t accept. And I can’t forgive. Because… because NOBODY admits anything they’ve done!”
You’re terriiiiiblllllleeeeee, Kraken Muriel!
It’s a discovery that throws the final days of her high school experience in the fictional town of Oceanside into disarray.Ha! Oceanside! Where do they get these wacky names? Maybe there’s other wacky towns nearby like Del Mar and Carlsbad!
As long as we’re making names up how about Miramar or La Jolla?
Those are just silly! La Jolla isn’t even actual Spanish, and Miramar? People need to be told to look at the ocean?
Or Porpoise Spit!
There are over a dozen towns called Springfield in the US but the one where The Simpsons live is still considered fictional because it’s obviously not meant to be any of those places. Same principle applies here.
Probably needed 90% more Puss in Boots.
Dear Sam Barsanti,THIS IS WHAT A REVIEW IS SUPPOSED TO READ LIKE.Thank you.
Quiet, you!You’ll get six paragraphs of a torturous, unwieldy hot-take on some vaguely-connect thought Barsanti had in relation to this movie and underdone snark and like it.
What? No it isn’t
Don’t you mean SEA +?…I’ll see myself out. (But also, having seen this at an early showing, totally agree with this review. ‘Tis a perfectly charming movie which…comes off as a bit rote in the end. Will say though, good LORD the trailers just gave the entire movie and then some. What the hell was going on with that?)
I watched the trailer for this along with several other before seeing Across the Spider-verse and as transporting and spell-binding as that movie was I kept thinking ‘man, every frame of this film makes those awful noisy trailers look like tired, generic crap.’
I expect nothing from Trolls 3 and will get it, but this film also looked so rote.
The trailer did a fantastic job of making me completely uninterested in the movie. It pretty much just summarizes the entire plot, while also making said plot seems amazingly generic.
I get so exhausted by the amount of time, labour, and passion that gets squandered on awful scripts. I see it in films, in television, in video games: no one respects the craft of writing, no one seems to support it, nobody pays for it.
no one respects the craft of writing, no one seems to support it, nobody pays for it.
And each thing is related to the other thing. It’s a cyclical paradox
Same here! We just saw Across the Spider-verse on Thursday, and yes, it’s just fantastic, but had what sounds like the same set of trailers. Our 15 year daughter who was stoked to see Spider-Man turned to me and said, “I can’t believe this was made …”. Though when Trolls came up I said, “Hey, I think this is a metaphor for using meth …”, and she said, “Yeah, I know, I really want to see it.”
So …:D
God I hate Anna Kendrick
somebody shared the poster for this a while ago on my socials and i legit thought it was a mock-up parody poster like “what if Dreamworks made Little Mermaid”.I am genuinely shocked to learn today that this is a real movie.
I kinda wish the movie was just about the Mean Girl Mermaid, sassing her way through life. She seems way more interesting than the lead character with her incredibly boring “I just wanna be a normal teen! OH NO THE PROM’S THIS WEEKEND!” storyline.
Oh no not amazing powers! Anything but that!
I assume its Shell Sea not Chelsea
LOL. I had a similar moment with that Winnie the Pooh horror film from earlier this year. “Shocked to learn this is a real movie’” pretty much sums up the state of the industry these days.
I’m surprised there’s no mention that mermaids are actually evil in this film, since the ads make absolutely no secret of it. Or is this a Charlies Angels Full Throttle situation, where the marketing guys just went rogue and openly spoiled the final reveal?
I’m going to say it’s probably the latter. The first trailer for this movie basically summarizes the movie’s entire plot.
Most trailers these days are like abbreviated synopses of the movies themselves so honestly I don’t even think a Full Throttle situation is outside the norm.
This animation style is far too ugly for me to care about the movie at all.
Even though it looks mediocre and from this review, sounds mediocre, I have to give the producers credit for releasing a movie where a mermaid (specifically modeled after the old Ariel) is the bad guy during a period where the Little Mermaid reboot is still in theaters. I mean, I think it’s a dumb move, but it’s a a great meta-joke imo.
It wasn’t terrible. There are definitely worse ways to kill a rainy Sunday afternoon with a seven year old.
I feel like this movie – and probably Trolls 3 – puts all the “Is Pixar finished?!”stuff into perspective. Elemental has many faults especially by Pixar standards, but it’s still not most of the other animated movies studios churn out.