Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken

Plot

In the town of Oceanside, Ruby Gillman and her family are secretly krakens. Determined to fit in with humans, Ruby's mother Agatha forbids her from going near the ocean, including her school's prom at sea. Ruby's friends Margot, Trevin, and Bliss convince her to ask out her crush Connor anyway, but she accidentally knocks him into the water. Ruby jumps in and saves Connor — unknowingly triggering an underwater transformation — but new student Chelsea Van Der Zee takes the credit. Noticing bioluminescent suction cups on her fingers, Ruby hides in the school library while going through an anxiety attack, but transforms into a giant kraken. She is spotted by Chelsea and Agatha, whose ocean-dwelling brother and Ruby's uncle Brill has been summoned by Ruby's transformation.

Agatha calms her distressed daughter down to human size, and Ruby confronts her parents, who explain that the women in their family turn into powerful Giant Krakens while underwater, much to Ruby's ire and distress. With Brill's reluctant help, Ruby sneaks into the ocean to go to the Kingdom of the Krakens, where she meets her grandmother Grandmamah, the Warrior Queen of the Seven Seas, who reveals that Ruby is in line to rule as protector of the ocean. Other creatures have tried to seize power, including leviathans, umibōzu, and most dangerous of all, mermaids. The evil mermaid queen Nerissa found the Trident of Oceanus but was defeated by Agatha, who hid the trident before abandoning her kingdom for a life on land. Next, she meets her estranged great-aunt and her grandmother's sister Queendom, who is the great only magician who offers her help. She strikes a bargain with her; she will unshrinks her just like all the Krakens as she was so she will be back to her possibly normal life once again. Returning home, Ruby is attacked by vengeful sea captain Gordon Lighthouse, but is saved by Chelsea, who is actually a mermaid.

Gordon's footage of Ruby in her kraken form goes viral, but Chelsea befriends Ruby, taking her on a "Super Sea Girl Ditch Day", and suggests that by finding the trident, they can end the war between krakens and mermaids; her mother, Nerissa, was killed trying to recover the trident from the Well of Seas. Meanwhile, Agatha arranges her husband and Ruby's father Arthur, her son and Ruby's younger brother Sam, and Brill to be hired by Gordon as monster hunters in order to keep their kraken identities a secret. After Ruby has an unsuccessful attempt to obtain the Trident of Oceanus, Grandmamah trains her granddaughter to master her kraken powers, but is unaware Ruby is using them to practice entering the Well of Seas, while Ruby neglects her friends to spend more time with Chelsea. Meanwhile, Arthur, Sam, and Brill trick Gordon into "capturing" their pet sea creature Nessie, making him believe he has ended the kraken threat. During an open house party, Ruby tries to introduce Chelsea to her mother, but Agatha is unwilling to trust a mermaid and forbids her daughter from returning to the ocean, infuriating Ruby as she transforms and storms off.

Voice cast

Lana Condor as Ruby Gillman, a shy 16-year-old kraken girl who is desperate to fit in at Oceanside High and has the ability to turn into a giant three-legged kraken when she is in the ocean like all royal female krakens do. She is described by the film's producer Kelly Cooney Cilella as "a really normal teenager".

Toni Collette as Agatha Gillman, Ruby's overprotective real estate agent mother who has the ability to turn into a giant four-legged kraken when she is in the ocean.

Annie Murphy as Chelsea Van Der Zee, the enthusiastic but snobbish, popular new girl at Oceanside High. She is secretly Queen Nerissa, the evil queen of the mermaids with a vendetta against the Gillman family.

Colman Domingo as Arthur Gillman, Agatha's husband and Ruby's supportive father.

Andrew Barth Feldman as Sam Gillman, Ruby's 7-year-old energetic and loyal younger brother who loves to play dodge ball. He is loosely based on co-writer Brian C. Brown.

Jane Fonda as Queen Gillman aka. Grandmamah, the Warrior Queen of the Seven Seas, the mother of Agatha, and Ruby and Sam's maternal grandmother.

Christine Baranski as Queendom, Grandmama's estranged sister, Ruby's great-aunt and the Wizard Queen of the Seven Seas.

Sam Richardson as Brill Gillman, a kraken male who is Ruby's dim-witted and enthusiastic maternal uncle, Grandmamah's son, Queendom's nephew and Agatha's brother.

Will Forte as Captain Gordon Lighthouse, a kraken-obsessed old sailor with a peg leg who works as a tour guide and has a crab named "Davy".

Jaboukie Young-White as Connor, a skater-boy who became Ruby's love interest.

Production

Development

By June 27, 2015 Screenwriters Brian C. Brown and Elliott DiGuiseppi initially pitched the story of a family of sea monsters living on land in plain sight to Chris Kuser, a development executive at DreamWorks Animation. Titled Meet the Gillmans, the script drew from their shared memories of growing up in Oviedo, Florida as well as Brown's personal experiences as a first generation Cuban American, The Gillman family are loosely based on Brown's real life family.

First time feature producer Kelly Cooney Cilella came on board as producer in April 2019. She previously worked as a story coordinator on Shrek 2, a development executive at DreamWorks Animation and a producer on the short film Bilby.

With original director Paul Tibbitt at the helm, and the addition of another writer, Neighbors from Hell creator Pam Brady, the film slowly started moving forward. In 2020, Faryn Pearl, who had known Cooney Cilella while working on Trolls World Tour came on board as the film's first head of story.

Cooney Cilella assembled her crew for the film, with Pierre-Oliver Vincent as production designer and Dave Walvoord as visual effects supervisor, the two having worked together in their respective roles on How to Train Your Dragon 2 and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. Jon Gutman as Head of Layout, who had worked on this position on The Croods: A New Age. First time lead editor Michelle Mendenhall, and first time art director Frederic William Stewart gave the film a unique look, and promoted some of the employees who worked on Trolls World Tour into first time leadership roles during the production, and also brought in some talent from DreamWorks's TV division for this film.

Cooney Cilella wanted to bring the film in a new direction, so after Tibbitt stepped down from his role as director, she contacted Kirk DeMicco, who had most recently directed the 2021 film Vivo to be director with Pearl being promoted as co-director. Tibbitt was credited in the final film under "special thanks".

Additional material for the film's screenplay was provided by Baby Mama writer/director Michael McCullers, Meghan Malloy, and the film's co-directors.

Animation and design

Character designers Timothy Lamb & Guillermo "Willie" Real designed hundreds of different design iterations of Ruby and her family, eventually leading to the final look modeled by Charles Ellison, with additional tweaks by modeler Hannah Kang, character look development supervisor Megan Lea Walker, and look development artists, Andy Harbeck and Rachael Yang. Additional characters were designed by Craig Kellman, character designer of The Bad Guys Taylor Krahenbahl, Julien Le Rolland and many others.

For the design of the hair of Nerissa during the film's climactic battle, the visual effects department created a Fluid Implicit Particle simulation which was used to simulate the character's interaction with the surrounding ocean. With an additional level set fillet generation technique was used to blend the ocean mesh with the water hair geometry.

Two mixed-media sequences for the film were designed and animated by Richard Ramazinski.

Music

Hans Zimmer composed the film's score. British singer-songwriter Mimi Webb performed the original song "This Moment", released on June 23 as a single, a week before the film's release. The song was a last minute addition after using a temp song "As It Was" by Harry Styles in a particular scene in the film, where it was replaced by "This Moment", which was written by DallasK, Lauv, Jacob Kasher and Amanda "Kiddo A.I." Ibanez, and was originally going to be performed by Lauv, but he passed on it and it was given to Webb. The soundtrack album was released on June 30, 2023, the same day as the theatrical release, in addition to the original song "Rise" performed by Freya Ridings, which plays during the end credits. She first performed the song live 3 days earlier at DreamWorks's Glendale campus.

Release

Theatrical

Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken debuted at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on June 15, 2023, and was theatrically released in the United States on June 30. The film was screened early on June 19, 2023, at various Regal Cinemas theaters as part of the chain's "Monday Mystery Movie" promotion.

In December 2022, Deputy Manager Director of Universal Pictures International Italy Massimo Proietti revealed that the film would be released in mid-2023. On March 16, 2023, following the release of the first trailer, it was revealed that the film would be released on June 30, 2023, taking over the original release date of Illumination's Migration.

Home media

Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken was released on Digital HD on July 18, 2023, 18 days after its theatrical release. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray on September 26, 2023.

The film was released on NBCUniversal's Peacock streaming service on October 20, 2023, and streamed on the service for four months as part of an 18-month deal with Netflix for Universal's animated films. The film moved to Netflix on February 20, 2024, becoming the most watched movie on the platform, having topped the chart for three days, and three weeks in the top 10 chart. It was seen by over 12.3 million viewers. However, it was announced that the film was expected to return to Peacock in December 2024.

Reception

Box office

Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken grossed $15.7 million in the United States and Canada, and $30.5 million in other territories, for a worldwide gross of $46.2 million. The film is the second-lowest-grossing film from DreamWorks Animation after Spirit Untamed in 2021, and was considered by analysts to be a box-office bomb.

In the United States and Canada, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken was released alongside Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. The film made $2.3 million on its first day, including $725,000 from Thursday night previews. The film debuted with $5.5 million, becoming DreamWorks Animation's lowest-grossing opening weekend of any of their feature films to date. The film's sixth-place finish also made it the studio's lowest-ranking three-day opening weekend, tying with Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003). Several publications attributed the reasons for its low opening to the film's limited three-month marketing, unclear target age group, an original film not based on an existing IP, its title, the trailers, and competition from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Elemental.

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 65% of 105 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The website's consensus reads: "Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken is littered with too much flotsam and jetsam from better animated features to stand as a true original, but its inherent sweetness and lively style make for likable enough family entertainment." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 50 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported 68% of filmgoers gave it a positive score.

Peter Debruge of Variety gave the film a positive review, writing, "South Park veteran Pam Brady, who shares screenwriting credit with Brian C. Brown and Elliott DiGuiseppi, brings all kinds of funny ideas to the film, which DeMicco does an admirable job of executing. But there's a simpler, more sincere movie underneath it all that seems to be taunting audiences, like a glowing shape from deep below." Tara McNamara of Common Sense Media gave the film 4 out of 5 stars, writing: "A parenting gold mine, this literal fish out of water story is completely entertaining and enjoyable for all ages, with plenty of positive messages. The message to kids can be applied in a variety of ways: "shine your light"." Kate Erbland of IndieWire gave the film a C+, and wrote in her review, "Kids are always in need of gracious tales about the power of being yourself in a world not necessarily built to embrace differences and stories like "Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken" can do that, with fun to spare. But why not get more splashy?"

Other critics felt that the storyline was underdeveloped and that the film failed to live up to its potential. Rachel LeBonte of Screen Rant rates it 2.5 out of 5 stars, calling the film "endearing" and praising the voice cast, but saying that it may have trouble making an impression with so many other options. She wrote, "That is Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken's biggest flaw: It doesn't go beyond surface-level. As Ruby gets more involved with the ocean and her burgeoning friendship with fellow sea creature Chelsea, her ties to the human world fall away, lessening the overall impact of her arc." Leigh Paatsch of Herald Sun awarded the film 1.5 out of 5 stars, writing, "Visually, the movie becomes more of an eyesore as it slithers along, while the story mashes up some confusing marine mythology with contemporary plotting points seen to better effect in Pixar's recent release Turning Red." James Berardinelli, film critic for ReelViews, awarded the film 2 out of 4, stars writing, "Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken is one of the most inconsequential big-screen cartoons to reach theaters this year." In a 3 out of 5 review, Tara Brady of The Irish Times called it "a likable film that can't decide if it's a Turning Red-style menstrual metaphor, a generational conflict story, a Nickelodeon teen diary sitcom, or Harry Potter except with creatures of the deep."