When I tell you the Marketing departments for animated studios have been failing in 2023 so far, Don’t take it as an exaggeration. With the exception of Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse, almost every animated movie that’s released in 2023 has been completely lost in the marketing shuffle. I spoke on it in my review for Elemental, and I stand by it here. Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken suffered the same fate, and unlike the aforementioned films, this one did not have nearly enough going right for it to overcome what little marketing push it had.
Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken follows the titular character (played by Lana Condor) as she navigates high school being different. She’s a shy brainiac, but most importantly, she’s blue, doesn’t have a spine, and has gills and fish ears. Her parents have always told her and her brother to tell others that “They’re Canadian”. But when she breaks her mother’s one rule and ends up in the ocean, she finds out it’s much more interesting than that: She, and her whole family, are krakens. Ruby has to balance being a normal teenager while also exploring her kraken roots with the help of her grandmother and the Queen of the Krakens (Jane Fonda).
Now, I’ll acknowledge right of the bat how good this movie looks. I’ve come to expect good work from Dreamworks Studios in terms of animation quality and coming off the success and uniqueness of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish’s style, I was excited to see what they pulled out here. The “faux-Claymation” style, as I’m calling it, worked pretty well and looked good.
Unfortunately, most everything else about Ruby Gillman was just bad. Between a half-baked and completely predictable story, weird looking characters and poor pacing throughout, I was shocked to see how badly Dreamworks missed the mark here.
What’s worse is that in my theater, which had a whole bunch of kids that were the exact target demographic for this movie, about halfway through it seemed as though no one was engaged to it. Kids were playing with each other, and at one point, the child right behind me leaned over to his father and said, “I don’t want to watch this anymore, can we leave?” and they got up and left. I was speechless at how much a movie couldn’t engage its own target demographic.
It’s sad too because the concept behind Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken was truly interesting. “A girl having to balance being a normal high schooler while also knowing if she touches water she turns into a giant Kraken.” Sign me up. Yet, the film hardly touches on this concept, instead electing for Ruby to fully dive into exploring her roots in what felt like a prototypical superhero origin story movie, and not a very good one at that. We’ve seen way too many done way too well from Marvel in recent years to try and take make that work. Especially when the story beats were so predictable and interlaced with flashing light sequences and heavy pop music montages to show off the animation rather that add to the story. At one point, my girlfriend and I looked at me each other with a “WTF is this?” look during one of these sequences.
Even the contrived story was so predictable. Beat for beat we were able to tell what was happening and what was coming next. That’s a bad sign. The good news is if you took your child to see Elemental or The Super Mario Bros. Movie earlier in the year, you saw 2 films for the price of one when this movie’s trailer aired. It literally gave away the entire story in 2 minutes.
Final Thoughts
I know I am not the target demographic here. I’m a 24-year-old male and I acknowledge that. However, I have always been able to find the good in movies not meant for me, and often times can remove myself from the equation and view a film from the eye of its target. But when that demo isn’t engaged you know there’s an issue. It seemed that this movie was destined for the screen of a parent’s iPhone that they gave to their kid to distract them as they sit at the Olive Garden waiting for their food. What an incredible miss from Dreamworks.
