In Roger Ebert’s review for Ratatouille, he emphasizes how animated film isn’t just for children, but for the whole family and even adults going on their own.  I kept thinking about that while watching Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken, a hyperactive, garish, humorless and unoriginal animated movie made ostensibly for children.  Amazingly, this is the second animated film released in the last year or so that uses a girl’s transition into womanhood as a metaphor for gaining supernatural powers.  Pixar’s Turning Red was released over a year before this movie and is the far superior film in every way.

If I were giving grades the underlying message of Ruby Gillman, about embracing your true nature and individuality, I’d give it an A.  But any film, whether it’s animated or live-action, must be critiqued holistically, not only how earnestly it conveys a positive message.  Giving a movie like this one a passing grade because it is well-intentioned and means well would be dishonest.  I sat through the movie’s ninety-minute runtime waiting for it to become interesting, funny or both, but it never happened.  The movie is energetic and colorful, but fails to generate any excitement.  The characters talk fast and things happen, but every plot development in this movie was trite to the point of being vacuous.  I feel sorry for the children who were dragged by their parents to see this instead of something far more entertaining like Spider-Man:Across the Spider-Verse or Elemental.  Sorry kids, you will never get your ninety minutes back.

The underlying concept of Ruby Gillman will be familiar to anyone who is familiar with the Coneheads.  (They were a skit on Saturday Night Live back in the Seventies and had their own movie.)  The Coneheads were able to convince everyone to disregard strange appearance because they were from France.  The underlying joke being that Americans knew little of France or its people, so for all Joe Sixpack knew, French people have cones on the top of their heads.  There was more to the skit than that, but Ruby Gillman is content to steal that one gag and run with it to the point of incredulity.  The Gillmans have explained to all of their friends and neighbors that they are from Canada.  Explaining a conehead is one thing; the Gillman’s have blue skin, no nose and tentacles for fingers.  If Americans believe that Canadians look like that, this country is in more trouble than we realize.

Please forgive my hyperbole, but I had to get that off my chest.  Animated films often rely on suspension of disbelief, but for some reason this movie got under my skin.  Maybe because nothing after that meager joke worked either.  Years ago, Ruby’s mother Agatha (Toni Collette) and Arthur (Colman Domingo) left the sea for dry land.  Agatha started a real estate business while Arthur did something I can’t remember.  As Agatha remains on land, she won’t revert to her ginormous kraken form.  Male kraken like Arthur don’t become huge because I think the movie is making a procreation analogy.  As we all know, females are the superior sex because they have the power to create babies while men just enable the process.  The movie could have used that juxtaposition as an obvious source for jokes but just abandons it.

This brings us to the movie’s eponymous character, Ruby (Lana Condor).  She’s a teenage girl who has a crush on classmate Conner (Jaboukie Young-White, cornering the market in lackluster animated films) and wants to ask him to the dance.  She’s nervous and accidentally knocks him into the water and is forced to jump in to rescue him.  As a result, her legs revert to tentacles and she grows several stories in height.  Her fore-tentacles also sprout luminescent suction cups.  These changes amaze her, as it would anybody I presume, but risk exposing the Gillman family’s true nature to the world.  After Ruby accidentally destroys the local library, her mother forbids her from going back into the water again.  You know kids are going to do the exact opposite of what their parents tell them to do, and Ruby does precisely that.

While exploring the sea Ruby meets her grandmother (Jane Fonda), who insists on being referred to as Grandmamah.  (The movie’s sense of humor never gets better than that.)  Grams tells Ruby how she’s destined to take over the throne, provided she learns what it’s like to be a true kraken.  Ruby excitedly agrees, and there are scenes of her swimming and doing other things that a kraken princess presumably does.  Grams also tells Ruby about a war between the kraken and the mermaids, and how a trident was used to subdue the mermaids and bring peace between the species.  The backstory is boring and forces comparisons to the exponentially better Little Mermaid.

Ruby soon attracts the attention of fellow classmate and mean girl Chelsea (Annie Murphy), who just so happens to be a mermaid.  Chelsea says that the way she treated Ruby on dry land was just an act, and that she really wants to be friends.  Uh huh.  Their friendship ultimately leads to a highly predictable conclusion that pits Ruby against Chelsea for control of the aforementioned trident and dominion over the seas.  If you believe for one second that evil will triumph over good, well, sorry to disappoint.

Given how successful The Little Mermaid was, I’m surprised it took this long for a movie to copy it.  Too bad that movie turned out to be Ruby Gillman.  I hadn’t been this bored sitting through an animated film since Disney’s Strange World.  (DC League of Super Pets is a close second.)    Like that film, this one spends a lot of time explaining things, including jokes.  There’s nothing more exhausting than a movie where something funny happens and a character is compelled to explain why it is funny in detail.  Ruby Gillman does that several times, a sign that the creators weren’t sure the kiddies would get the joke.  Unfortunately, there were no jokes to be gotten.  

A sure sign of desperation on behalf of filmmakers behind Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken is how everyone in this movie talks fast.  Characters speaking dialog like they’re hyped-up on Red Bull never makes what they say funny.  The movie’s color palette is garish and jarring, looking like a child who uses every color in their box of crayons.  The filmmakers should have studied Coco before inking one cell.  The way the characters are drawn in a style along the lines of Wallace and Gromit, but without charm or whimsy.  Ruby oddly reminded me of Cathy from the Sunday comics.  Lastly, I was stunned when the credits revealed who voiced the characters.  Collette and Domingo are excellent actors, but their voices aren’t distinct enough for voiceover work.  Fonda is suitably hammy, but she’s given little to do besides explaining the plot’s tiresome backstory.  Will Forte chews up all the scenery as salty dog Gordon Lighthouse, to no avail.  Sam Richardson probably comes out the best as Uncle Brill, but he’s not in the movie enough to save it on his own.  Watching Ruby Gillman is like watching a kid devour a pile of gummy worms while they talk excitedly about their toy collection.  It’s one of the worst animated films I’ve ever seen, and probably the worst movie DreamWorks Animation ever released.  Not Recommended.

This trailer gives away the entire plot of the movie: