49. Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken
Boring borefest that bored the snot out of me is more like it.
Did that title rewrite sound lazy? Too bad. I can’t summon any real desire to put any effort into slagging this film off.
Imagine, if you will, that as you’re reading this review my voice is the most dull, tired, and lethargic it could possibly ever be.
I tried to watch this so called feature film three times over the course of three days. I fell asleep part way through it the first time. The second time I fell asleep at pretty much the same spot. I think I almost did it again the third time but I managed it. I made it to the end and found out that, gasp, the day was saved. I think.
I don’t really recall what the stakes were honestly. Not fully. Fuck me. Let me try.
Uhm. Ruby Gillman (Lana Condor) is a teenage kraken who lives with her family of krakens.
She’s got a mom, a dad, and a little brother.
They’re all blue but they don’t disguise the fact that they’re blue. So when she goes outside and people she’s never met are like “That bitch is blue” she’s like “I’m from Canada” and they’re like “Oh, okay. That makes sense.”
It’s a joke but since it’s necessary for the entire plot to function it kind of falls a little flat. Jokes like that tend to be a lot more risky when the main focal point of your film isn’t to be a comedy, even if it does have comedy IN it.
This film does try to take itself seriously what with Ruby finding out that she can transform into a giant kaiju kraken when she goes into the ocean. Why do they live by the shoreline if that’s the case? Because the moisture in the air or because they need to be close by the beach to live properly or something. OR SOMETHING. I don’t know. They give an explanation. It’s fine. I don’t care.
Uh, mom (Toni Collette) pulled a Turning Red and didn’t tell her daughter she can transform into a beast and that leads to some friction so when her mom’s brother comes by, Uncle Whose-his-face (played by some guy), and says that he lives with her grandma (Jane Fonda) who rules the sea or something she goes with him to meet her to learn to be a kraken. Like properly.
Then she leaves and stuff happens. Also, she’s got a crush on this really disturbing looking boy who somehow looks less human than she does. The designs in this film are very hit or miss. Honestly, the designs of the krakens are way less creepy and off-putting than the human ones.
Now, some of the designs look neat, like Ruby’s friend group. I actually like all of their designs. The crazy boat fisherman who acts like he’s hunting Moby Dick when it comes to these krakens but also has a live streaming channel where he does it is a very inspired character. Definitely the most creative one in the film.
While I’m being positive, the animation in this film is stellar. The fact that it does have a style all its own does a lot to help it get some mileage out of it. Granted, I’m not a fan of the style but it stands out regardless because of it. The fluid motions being almost water-noodle-like is definitely on purpose to simulate the sea… but it extending to the humans has an off and on kind of success rate to it. It was mostly weird to me when it came to them but everything about the sea and the way they moved in there looked great.
What else is positive? Uh. There's a really cute whale that Ruby says hi to when she's traversing the ocean. It says hi back in whale speak. It was a very adorable scene. I loved seeing it's little subtitles pop up when it spoke whale and said hi. It reminded me of the happy whale in the Holoska level of Sonic Unleashed.
Hmm...
Also, this film has a villain, I think. I mean, yes, she is but she’s strangely written. Like, you find out in the trailer for this thing that this mermaid girl is the villain but the movie takes SO looooong to get to that point that you realize “Oh wait, this was supposed to be a twist… maybe?”
I say “maybe” because the grandma straight up says all mermaids are evil. In this exposition backstory she gives she talks about how the evil Queen Nerissa was the queen of all mermaids and they fought the krakens and lost. So here comes Chelsea the Mermaid (Annie Murphy) in present day, attending Oceanside High as the new popular girl but is just really nice to Ruby and wants to be friends… and then it gets revealed that she’s a mermaid.
And you think “Oh… maybe she’ll have a change of heart and turn around towards the end, proving that a line of thinking as ass backwards as ‘All members of this one race are evil’ is probably not something you should want to go with in a kids film.”
But no, she’s evil.
She tricks Ruby into getting the magic trident that Ruby’s mom managed to snag from Queen Nerissa all those years ago and they duke it out in the final battle that was ALSO shown off in the trailer. For you see, Chelsea isn’t even really Chelsea. She IS Queen Nerissa disguised as a highschool girl which is really creepy and funny to me.
She literally pulled a “How do you do, fellow kids” on Ruby here. Yes, that meme is literally the evil villain’s plan in this film. It’s so funny.
She gets defeated and locked in a cage by the old fisherman streamer guy and then the movie ends with everyone finding out Ruby’s a kraken but it’s okay because she saved them and they get to dance at prom on the boat and yeah and blehh...
Little brother knocks out all the kids at his school with his slick moves so… I enjoyed that.
The film thinks ending on Ruby turning into a kraken to run out to sea to fight some new unknown problem of a Devil Whale while the grandma says “A kraken will always be there to answer the call” is hinting at some sort of superhero life for the girl but man… if it wanted to sell me on that I feel like there should have been more to the conflicts presented here than just this ONE mermaid. It wasn’t even a new mermaid. It was the same one from the old backstory grandma gave. I guess it helps knowing there’s more than just one bad thing in the sea for a kraken to fight at least.
I mean, I guess it helps for her sake of needing to go through all this in the first place. I’m sort of kind of left here wondering what the point of any of this was.
There wasn’t really anything of interest here to sink your teeth into. The characters are all basic as hell. None of them are interesting aside from the Captain Ahab livestreamer guy and Ruby’s weird friends. I like Ruby’s little brother a bit but that’s really only because he’s a little adorable. I like cute things. But if he wasn’t cute I wouldn’t have much to like about him either. There’s nothing here I haven’t seen before or seen done better in other stuff. Like Turning Red.
Turning Red had style too. That film was oozing with style and an awesome as hell boyband musical ending that made my soul cry when it happened. This movie doesn’t have that. No wonder it put me to sleep.
The mother in Turning Red was at least an oppressive and secretive character in a manner that summoned an emotion out of me, even if it was a negative one. This mom is doing the EXACT same thing THAT mom did for the EXACT same reasons (including the part where she has a restrained relationship with HER mother who thinks this mystical shit is awesome) and yet it's so much more uninteresting.
It feels like a direct-to-DVD rip-off of Turning Red. I'd almost say it looks like it too. The style in this movie reminds me of those kinds of movies. I'm not kidding. The only thing keeping me from just calling it a rip-off is the fact that this movie came out one year after Turning Red. It's literally impossible for it to have been a rip-off. Dreamworks and Pixar just had the same idea at the same time again, somehow, and one did it way better than the other.
The only thing that doesn't feel like a rip-off is everything surrounding the mermaid bitch but that's a whole host of problems all its own. I'm just saying there's a reason DnD has gotten some push back against the idea that all races of beings have to be this way or that way. What on Earth was this movie thinking running with "all mermaids are evil" by showcasing a mermaid trying to be Ruby's friend and ignoring the heritage of her awful people only to also turn out to be evil.
It's honestly a little disgusting. Not to mention how it continues to curdle the brain, trying to figure out why they spoiled her turn to evil IN THE TRAILERS if they were gonna spend so much time in the goddamn movie focusing on the two of them becoming friends. It's already a boring as shit movie. Why waste more of my time?!
Since I know you’ve never seen this film I can at least confirm for you that you made the right choice by not bothering. There’s nothing to see here. I'm left truly astonished by this movie. I've seen films that feel wrote. I've seen some that feel basic. I've seen some that are boring. I just finished telling you about the one that annoyed me the absolute most out of all these films before this one. Yet I can't offer you anything in the way of intrigue or a proper discussion for this.
I’ve made it out of most of these Dreamworks films with something to take away from them but I feel like I might have found the one that I just haven’t. I got nothing.
The fact that there's nothing to talk about here really is this movie's biggest talking point. It's truly confounding that this thing exists at all, let alone in the state that it's in. Not only is it painfully generic and not only does it do everything wrong from a storytelling standpoint but it did everything wrong from a marketing one too.
This film had a budget of 70 million which means it needed to make at least 175 million to break even before it could start making a profit. It only made 46 million.
Where was the kraken on that one huh? She didn’t answer the call there. Dumb bitch.
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4 months ago
03 Apr 2025 00:48 CEST
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