★★★

DreamWorks’ latest feature comes billed as John Hughes for kids but delivers Pixar for amnesiacs. That’s not to say the film is bad by any means. Heck, word vomit title aside, Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken even boasts bursts of fleeting brilliance. And yet, where it stumbles is in comparison to the better offerings it recalls. From Turning Red is plundered a somewhat clunky metaphor for puberty. From Luca comes the notion of sea monsters living on land and the down low. If all you can add is a bland pop soundtrack, why bother? It’s almost tragic to note that, owing to pandemic restrictions, Ruby Gillman will easily surpass its superior forebears’ stringent box office returns.

Let’s not be too harsh. There’s some gorgeous animation here. Sub-marina escapades grant fine opportunity for lush bioluminescence but it’s the land based hairstyling and knitwear that really catches the eye. The latter is worn by the titular teen Kraken, Ruby Gillman, who is engagingly voiced by To All the Boys’ star Lana Condor. Hers is a scratchy green turtleneck and impressively tactile in a film produced on less than half the dollar behind the average Pixar toon. The style here is less bold and startling than DreamWorks’ more dynamic efforts of late – Bad Guys and Puss in Boots to name a pair – but nonetheless appealing to the younger eye. Immense fun is mined from whimsically flexible character motion, while all unfolds against a lively colour block backdrop. It’s a curious feature here that affords the film’s more fantastical design work to life above the water line than below, which often leans a tad toward the murky.

We spend more time on land too, with Ruby brought up among the humans. She’s blue but it’s a running gag that shrugs off this unusual Gillman quirk by jibing American bias: ‘we’re from Canada’. Much as Disney’s little mermaid – deliciously aped here by the film’s red headed antagonist – dreamed of swapping gills for lungs, Ruby longs to take a dive under the sea. Such is forbidden by realtor mum, Agatha (Toni Colette), and dad, Arthur (Colman Domingo), who won’t even let poor Ruby go to her school prom, due to it taking place on a boat. It’s the stuff of nightmares. In Ruby Gillman world, prom is either a ‘post-colonial, patriarchal construct’ or ‘hormone fuelled benchmark of adolescence’ but utterly essential to a young woman’s development in either case.

Kids will, of course, be kids and it’s not long before Ruby takes the plunge. That she does so to save her gorgeously hirsute – and mathematically inclined – crush should only be seen as a bonus. Whatever Ruby expected to come from her coming into contact with seawater for the first time, however, it is perhaps fair to say it wasn’t a growth of three enormous tentacles and the development of day-glo suckers on her palms. She is, bless her, a touch alarmed but it’s nothing mum and dad haven’t seen before. For the Gillmans, it’s just a girl thing: ‘Your body is going through changes…think of it as blossoming.’

Where Turning Red grounded its pubescent allegory in a bathe of cultural specificity – and enjoyed superior resonance from the imbued heart of its director, Domee Shi’s own emotional journey – Ruby Gillman’s handling feels rather more clunky. Solid central performances do much in the aid of invigorating characters lacking in dimension but can’t mine miracles. Likewise, while the addition of Ruby’s Jane Fonda voiced warrior queen Grandmamah brings some potency to cross-generational unification, any sense of a pent up history powering it is sleight to say the least. What’s left is cheery fun, easy on the eye and gentle on the brain.

T.S.