RUBY GILLMAN, TEENAGE KRAKEN

RUBY GILLMAN, TEENAGE KRAKEN has always felt a little funny because she lives in a human world, but she isn’t a human, and when things go awry, she finds out just how different she is than humans. RUBY GILLMAN, TEENAGE KRAKEN is a fun animated fantasy with some positive moral content about family and motherhood, but the plot is lackluster in the movie’s first half, and the movie has some cautionary elements such as the mother isn’t truthful to her teenage daughter, and there are two references to a girl asking another girl to the school prom.

Ruby is a teenager who has always found herself out of place, because she’s a kraken living in a human world. Ruby comes from a line of royal female sea creatures who can grow huge, to protect the ocean from power-hungry mermaids. Ruby’s mother and father, who love each other deeply, have decided to live on land with their family, rather than in the water as a kraken. This means that Ruby can’t be in the water and can’t attend her prom because it will be held on a boat in the water. Ruby goes to school and tells her friends the sad news she can’t go to the prom. However, she decides to go anyway and not tell her parents. She will also ask the boy she likes to go with her to the prom.

When Ruby asks Connor to attend the prom with her, he accidentally falls over the edge of the ocean pier into the water. Ruby jumps into the water to get him. However, she turns into a huge kraken and sends a signal into the water. Ruby saves Connor, but also becomes so huge that she accidently destroys the school library. She’s totally thrown off when this happens because her mother never told Ruby this would happen if she went into the water.

Not long afterwards, Ruby returns to her smaller size, but the signal her body sent into the water notifies her Uncle Brill. He comes to visit and tells Ruby about her grandmother and leads her to her. Her grandmother, Grandmamah, turns out to be a queen of the krakens. This means that Ruby is a princess. Ruby is overwhelmed by this information and must decide to either stay on land or stay with her Grandmamah.

When going back toward land, Ruby sees a classmate, Margot, in the sea and discovers Margot is actually a mermaid. The mermaids and the krakens have been in a war for years, but Margot believes the mermaids and the krakens can be friends again if Ruby finds a trident with magical power that can unite the two groups.

Can Ruby restore the relationship between the krakens and the mermaids and end the war? Can she restore the relationship she has with her own mother, who didn’t tell her about all these things from the past?

RUBY GILLMAN, TEENAGE KRAKEN is a fun animated movie overall, but it doesn’t have a strong, cohesive plot until 45 minutes or so into the story, halfway through the movie. The story in RUBY GILLMAN has some relatable concepts when Ruby is shown as a teenager who goes to school and feels out of place. However, when she becomes a kraken, viewers may not feel as connected to her character.

RUBY GILLMAN, TEENAGE KRAKEN has some moral elements stressing motherhood and family, but it also has some cautionary elements. Ruby discovers her mother just wants to protect and take care of her family, which is promotion of motherhood. However, Ruby’s mother has a bad relationship with her own mother, though this relationship is restored in the end. Also, the mother hides a lot of information from Ruby and isn’t open with her about the past and about what exactly being a kraken means, though she learns she was wrong. Ruby herself decides to rebel against her mother, just as her mother rebelled against her own mother. This gets resolved by the end of the movie, but rebellion is the leading conflict. Finally, there are also two mentions of a girl asking another girl to go to the prom, but there aren’t any prom scenes depicting this.

All in all, therefore, MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for older children for RUBY GILLMAN, TEENAGE KRAKEN.