- “Discover the hero just beneath the surface.”
- ―Tagline
Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken (originally titled Meet the Gillmans) is a 2023 American computer-animated action-comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Universal Pictures, It is the studio's 44th feature film. The film premiered on June 15, 2023 at the Annecy Festival and was released by Universal Pictures on June 30, 2023 in the United States.
The film received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the voice acting but criticized the story and felt that it had failed to live up to its potential. It was a box-office bomb, grossing $46.2 million against a $70 million budget, with projections of an $80 million loss for Universal.
Plot
In the seaside town of Oceanside, 16-year-old Ruby Gillman lives her family of humanoid krakens trying to fit in as humans. Her mother, Agatha Gillman, forbids her from going to prom because it's on a ship in the ocean. At Oceanside high school, Ruby initially decides not to go, but her friends Margot, Trevin, and Bliss convince her to go and ask out her crush, Connor. Before she can ask, she accidentally blasts Connor into the water with a confetti cannon. Ruby jumps in and saves him, but Connor thinks he was saved by the new girl, Chelsea Van Der Zee, who for some reason, tries to befriend Ruby. Ruby notices bioluminescent suction cups on her fingers and runs to hide in the library. She attempts to call Agatha, but she decides against it. Suddenly, to her confusion and horror, Ruby transforms into a giant kraken and accidentally destroys the library in the process. Ruby panics after being spotted by Chelsea and runs to hide at the lighthouse. Agatha notices from the distance and chases her, reuniting with her brother, Brill, along the way, who was sent to get Ruby by her grandmother after they felt the Pulse emitted by Ruby's transformation. Finally catching up with Ruby, Agatha calms her down and she shrinks down to her normal size. Back at their house, Arthur, Ruby's father, and Sam, Ruby's little brother, find out about Ruby going into the ocean and her transformation. Agatha explains how Ruby's early mishap had triggered the transformation into giant kraken, revealing she turns into a giant kraken too.
Angered that Agatha never told her the truth, Ruby sneaks out to meet her grandmother, the Warrior Queen of the Seven Seas, with a reluctant Brill's help. Grandmamah reveals to Ruby that she is a princess and next in line to take the throne, to her shock. She also explains that the krakens have sworn to protect the ocean and its creatures from the monsters, especially from the most evil and dangerous creature of all: The Mermaids, contrary to popular belief.
The mermaids, led by their evil queen Nerissa, found a powerful weapon to defeat a giant kraken called The Trident of Oceanus. The war against the mermaids ended fifteen years prior when Grandmamah and Agatha, who was the Greatest Kraken Warrior in the seas, battled against the evil queen, and during the battle Agatha managed to take away the trident from Nerissa, and trapped the mermaids for all eternity, but then Agatha hid the trident away, leaving her home, her mother, her kind, to live alongside her family in Oceanside. To this information, Ruby denies the throne, but is thankful to have finally met her grandmother. On her way home, Ruby is attacked and almost killed by elderly sailor and Oceanside tour guide, Gordon Lighthouse. However, Chelsea, the new girl in school, reveals herself to be a mermaid, saves and helps Ruby escape, much to Gordon's disappointment.
The next day, Ruby tries to go back to her normal life, but footage of her in her kraken form becomes viral. She ends up ditching school with Chelsea, who tells her that her mother, the mermaid queen Nerissa, was supposedly killed trying to retrieve the trident, which was hidden by Agatha inside an underwater volcano called The Well of Seas. She asks Ruby to get it to help make a peaceful alliance between the kraken and mermaids, so Ruby trains with her grandmother to be powerful enough to get it, including mastering all of her powers: super strength, super speed, body armor and laser eyes.
On prom night, Ruby goes to tell her mother about Chelsea, but Agatha, shocked and outraged that ruby made friends with a mermaid and unwilling to trust that mermaid, forbids her from going to the ocean again, making an angry Ruby to transform into her giant kraken form in anger and storm off running back into the ocean to grab the trident for Chelsea. While Agatha goes to deal with Grandmamah, and when the latter finds out about Ruby's friendship with a mermaid, she reveals that Nerissa never had a daughter and Agatha realizes that Chelsea is not who she says she is. Ruby succeeds in retrieving the trident but is betrayed by Chelsea who reveals that she is actually Nerissa and that she used Ruby to help her reclaim it to exact her revenge on the krakens. Nerissa sheds her disguise and traps Ruby under some rocks before going to destroy Oceanside. Agatha and Grandmamah try to fight her off, while Brill finds a wounded and demoralized Ruby. He encourages her by revealing the reason why Agatha left in the first place: to raise Ruby and protect her from the dangers in the ocean because of the mermaids, but importantly, she chose her own path and Ruby over the throne. With this revelation, Ruby goes to the surface to stop Nerissa.
Nerissa overpowers Agatha and Grandmamah, but Ruby emerges and engages her in a duel over the trident, revealing her secrets to her family, her friends and Connor. Nerissa gains the upper hand, but Ruby disarms her with her laser eyes. Realizing that the trident can be destroyed with enough power, Ruby convinces Agatha and Grandmamah to use their laser eyes to destroy the trident together, defeating Chelsea and shrinking her down to her normal size, where she is captured by Gordon. In the end Ruby reconciles with Agatha, reunites with her friends, and asks Connor out to prom, to which he accepts, while Agatha and Grandmamah reconcile as well.
Some time later, everyone goes back to their normal lives, with the gillmans becoming more popular than ever, and Ruby and Connor becoming a couple as she becomes the protector of Oceanside.
Cast
- Lana Condor as Ruby Gillman, a shy 16-year-old kraken girl and princess who is desperate to fit in Oceanside High and has the ability to turn into a giant three-legged kraken when she is in the ocean like all the royal female krakens do.
- Toni Collette as Agatha Gillman, a Real Estate Agent who renounced her title, she is Ruby and Sam's overprotective mother and Arthur's wife who doesn’t want her daughter to go to the sea as their number-one rule, and has the ability to turn into a four-legged kraken when she is in the ocean.
- Annie Murphy as Chelsea Van Der Zee/Nerissa, a snobbish mermaid-turned-human.
- Jane Fonda as Grandmamah, Ruby's grandmother and the Warrior Queen of the Seven Seas.
- Sam Richardson as Uncle Brill, Ruby and Sam's uncle and Agatha's brother.
- Liza Koshy as Margot, a go-lucky student at Oceanside High and Ruby's best friend.
- Colman Domingo as Arthur Gillman, Ruby and Sam's father and Agatha's husband.
- Will Forte as Gordon Lighthouse, a rusty old sailor in Oceanside who works a Tour Guide.
- Jaboukie Young-White as Connor, Ruby's crush and math tutee.
- Blue Chapman as Sam Gillman, Ruby's 7-year-old brother who she finds very annoying.
- Eduardo Franco as Trevin, a gamer and one of Ruby's friends.
- Ramona Young as Bliss, a goth girl and one of Ruby's friends.
- Randy Thom (voice design) as Nessie, a sea dog and the Gillmans' family pet.
- Echo Kellum as Doug
- Nicole Byer as Janice
Additionally, the Arsement couple voice a home buyer and tourist and Karen Foster voices the school librarian.
Production
On June 15, 2021, it was reported by GWW that DreamWorks Animation had an original feature called Meet the Gillmans set for release in 2022; directed by Paul Tibbitt, written by Pam Brady with Chris Kuser and Christi Soper executive producing.[1] A day later, it was reported that Laura Dern, Lana Condor & Michael Sheen were being eyed for roles in the film this time with production reported to start in 2022 instead.[2] On December 12, 2022, the Deputy Managing Director of Universal Pictures International Italy: Massimo Proietti announced some of the major releases from Universal arriving to theatres in the coming semester. One of those was Meet the Gillmans with a release window of summer 2023.[3]
On March 16, 2023, it was announced with a new title as 'Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken', along with a poster and trailer.
Marketing
The first and second trailers were released on March 16, 2023 and May 22, 2023 respectively, a PSA featurette was released on May 27, 2023.
Reception
As of July 24, 2023, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken has grossed $15.7 million in the United States and Canada, and $30 million in other territories, for a worldwide gross of $45.8 million.
In the United States and Canada, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken was released alongside Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and was projected to gross $4–8 million from 3,400 theatres in its opening weekend. The film made $2.3 million on its first day, including $725,000 from Thursday night previews. The film debuted with $5.2 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 Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas from 2003. Several publications, including TheWrap, /Film, and Variety, attributed the reasons for its rough opening to the film's limited three-month marketing, the trailers, and competition from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Elemental.
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 66% of 88 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. If you buy the notion that krakens shrink down to human scale — and that none-too-bright people might be daft enough not to spot them — then the high school scenes are charming. Ruby's a big nerd with a head for quadratic equations, and she's having trouble working up the nerve to ask her study buddy to prom (it's pretty clear he feels the same way about her). Not that overprotective Agatha would let her attend anyway."
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