The Box-Office Bomb Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken Is a LOT Like Turning Red, But Not as Good
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I asked my nine year old son Declan if he wanted to watch Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken with me because he loves monsters and animation and the majority of what he sees.
He made it about twenty minutes before he said, “I don’t like this. It’s just a rip-off of Turning Red.”
I told him that that seemed a little harsh. Sure, both movies use a female protagonist turning into a giant monster as a not particularly subtle allegory for the physical and emotional changes of adolescence. Both films use fantasy to similarly explore the challenges and rewards of assimilation. And both films have climaxes involving the parents of the protagonists also turning into giant monsters. To be fair, there are a number of scenes in Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken that feels awfully similar to ones in Turning Red.
I tried to convince Declan that a movies can have a LOT in common with another movie without necessarily being a rip-off but I had to concede that he had a point.
I was surprised by Declan’s reaction because up until fairly recently he approached entertainment from a pre-critical mindset, the way pretty much all children do. We’re not born little Siskels and Eberts. No, something has to go terribly wrong with our lives in order for us to pursue film criticism as a profession.
When we’re children, we don't necessarily enjoy kid’s films or television shows because they’re good; instead we like them because we aren’t able to approach entertainment from a critical perspective so you tend to appreciate anything that’s even halfway decent.
Sure, you might draw the line at, say, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie but when you’re very young you gobble up whatever slop Disney feeds you and ask for more.
So Declan starting to act like the son of a film critic is bringing out complicated, mixed emotions in me. On one level I'm proud that, despite having pretty intense ADHD, he's remembering a lot of the weird things that I tell him, the same way that, to this day, I still remember vividly all the crazy shit my dad taught me. For example my dad didn’t teach me about math or saving money but I did learn at an early age that Randolph Scott and Cary Grant were roommates not because they needed to save money but rather because they were gay lovers.
Why did my dad feel the need to tell me that? I have no idea but it sure stuck in my brain.
I don’t fill my son’s fertile, ever-growing brain with salacious gossip like that but yesterday he was complaining that the uncanny valley aspect of early Pixar shorts is really jarring.
I thought, “Wow, where do you get ideas like that?” and realized that it was from me and the things that I talk about that I assume everyone ignores or forgets but that my son remembers because he is brilliant and has a very weird, special brain.
At the same time I’m a little melancholy about Declan entering the critical stage of his development because he will undoubtedly use those critical skills against me when he becomes a rebellious teenager. But it's also a bittersweet development because it means that Declan is growing up and some part of me wants him to remain an endlessly enthusiastic boy forever.
This might seem like a self-indulgent tangent but Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken, like Turning Red, is about growing up and finding yourself and embracing the things that make you weird and different because those are also the things that make you special.
Ruby Gillman revolves around the title character, a fifteen year old girl who is a typical teenager with two big exceptions. First and foremost, she’s really into Math, which is just gross. I cannot relate to someone with that kind of sick obsession.
She’s also an undercover Kraken, a mythical sea beast of legend and lore. Ruby manages to fit in despite her bizarre enthusiasm for math and the fact that she has blue skin and no spine.
I wasn't crazy about the character design here. It feels a little generic and the film goes a little too far in making Kraken adorable. Ruby’s mother Agatha (Toni Collette) has assimilated even more successfully. She’s traded in her old life as a warrior-princess of the Sea for a new one as a successful real estate agent.
Ruby's mother and father do their best to instill a sense of fear and dread within their daughter by telling her that she can never go into the ocean or terrible things will happen to her.
This bums her out because she wants to take her dreamy crush Connor (Jaboukie Young-White) to the prom but her parents forbid it because the prom is on a boat. An anxious Ruby accidentally knocks Connor into the water. When she leaps in to save him she turns into a giant Kraken and destroys a library.
I don't want to be cynical but it feels like half of the animated films released since 2010 revolve around one or more of the following tropes
1. Protagonist discovering that they possess a secret power
2. The main character learning that they are a figure of myth and legend, with an incredible destiny beyond their imaginations
3. Heroes learning that they are secretly royalty or Gods, or Gods who are also royalty.
Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken recycles all three of these cliches in ways that can’t help but feel little formulaic and overly familiar.
A curious Ruby eventually meets her grandmother Grandmama (Jane Fonda). Grandmama informs Ruby of her secret identity as a Kraken Princess and the daughter of one of the fiercest and most feared Kraken warriors.
Agatha was once a feared and revered monarch but she traded it all in to be a Pumpkin Spice-scented, Starbuck’s drinking basic human wannabe.
Ruby begins exploring the giant Kraken side of her heritage with the help of her friend Chelsea Van Der Zee (Schitt's Creek Annie Murphy), an undercover mermaid and the instantly popular new girl at her high school. But can she be trusted or are mermaids to be feared and hated, as Ruby’s grandmother insists?
I liked Ruby Gillman more than Declan but my problem with it is fundamentally the same as my son’s: it’s like Turning Red but nowhere near as good.
One of the many things that I love about Turning Red is its cultural specificity. It wasn’t just about a girl: it’s about a thirteen year old Chinese-Canadian in the early oughts who is absolutely obsessed with a brilliant, pitch-perfect parody of every boy band ever.
It’s this grounding in reality and the complex emotions of adolescence that defineTurning Red as much as its fantasy elements. Without it Ruby Gillman feels a little impersonal.
Despite the litany of criticisms I have laid out I liked Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken for the most part. It’s a nice movie and a very likable movie and a movie I wish I enjoyed more unreservedly.
I’m not surprised that Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken was a box-office bomb. It’s a curious little orphan that tries a little too hard but its heart is in the right place.
I was intrigued by Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken in part because it was co-written by Pam Brady, a veteran comedy writer whose screenwriting credits include South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Team America World Police, Hot Rod and Hamlet 2.
Then again she was also responsible for this so her judgment is clearly not infallible.
If I might end this piece with even more faint praise Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken isn’t too bad if you don’t expect too much!
Failure, Fiasco or Secret Success: Somewhere between a Failure and a Secret Success
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