Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken

With our pals at Pixar making a sad of a habit of striking out both critically and commercially with their avowedly original, story-driven pictures (most recent example: Elemental), it leads us to turn our cynical gaze towards Dreamsworks for our full-length volatility fix, purveyors of the spanking-new How to Train Your Dragon saga, and the less-excellent Trolls movies.

Their new one, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, derives from a mannerly original concept, and is rather a variegated kettle of anthropomorphic sea life. It is a full-throated triumph of the matriarchy in which three generations of sexuality kraken (the semi-mythical squid monster) place whispered their personal differences to deal with an uprising by a wreath of evil mermaids.

By a strange quirk, Ruby and her family possess the worthiness to disguise themselves as humans, and despite the fact their skin is blue, their friends and colleagues don’t towards to bat an eyelid. And if anyone does ask, just say you’re from Canada. It deals, directly and indirectly, with teenage growing pains and fairytale lore, recalling at points the ultimate teen upper school blow-out, Carrie, but moreover the gently operatic pre-teen love story of Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo.

Drawing on the social-sexual minefield that is upper school, with the looming shadow of prom on the horizon, the mucosa sees gawky, turtle-necked “mathlete” Ruby (snappily voiced by Lana Condor) plucking up the valiance to ask frizz-haired skater boi Connor (Jaboukie Young-White) to prom. A glitter cannon snafu sends Connor flying into the sea, and Ruby must stump up the valiance to save him, despite the fact she’s under strict instructions from her mother Agatha (Toni Collette) to never come into contact with salt water, lest she turn when into a giant kraken.

From there, the story sees Ruby discovering an undersea life that’s been untiringly subconscious from her while moreover weighing up the pros and cons of family, school, her squad and the nervy antics that come with pairing off and petting. It’s not the most original proposition, and the relative thinness of the material is emphasised by a surplusage of pop music montages in which Ruby swims virtually really quickly. There’s moreover a “plot twist” that the majority of viewers over the age of four will have seen from many, many miles off.

Much like Ruby’s own ultra-bendy physique, Pam Brady’s screenplay is a little all over the place, and there’s a sense that too much is stuff packed into a relatively short runtime. That said, the setting and notation are delightful, as is the diamond of the shoreline town of Oceanside where the colourful, geometric buildings are all fashioned from shipping crates and other nautical paraphernalia. The voice work is strong wideness the board, with special mention going to Jane Fonda as regal kraken, Grandmama.

It’s such a lovely set-up, you wish the filmmakers had attempted to do a little increasingly with it. Maybe if this does Mario money, we’ll get to see some increasingly vita teen kraken adventures. They would be welcome.

Little White Lies is single-minded to championing unconfined movies and the talented people who make them.

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