Ruby Gillman, La Jeune Kraken

The film's story/plot was lower tier for a Dreamworks Animation movie, but overall the film was decent. The film was at best comparable to Spies in Disguise (2019), Abominable (2019), or Ron's Gone Wrong (2021) (comparable to these films in the following categories:).

The film's animation was fairly good, on par with other animations of the last few years. Some "out of this world" character designs make the film more stand out a bit, but does not add to character memorability. The soundtrack is upbeat and chipper, with some more modern music. The score has some epic and heavy "hits/boojs" that rumble the theater, so it's got an immersive aspect to it.

Characters were less relatable than characters of other other films, but still goofy and fun-loving. This is mostly due to the 2-dimensionality of the secondary characters, but generally audiences, especially children, will not care/notice and will laugh at their antics.

The film's writing is reminiscent of Turning Red (2022), with a lot of parallels in the storyline such as: family lineage (females of the family turning into krakens), controlling the transformation by remaining calm, hiding the truth from the main character till they learn for themselves etc., with some slight variation. Basically what you've seen in the trailer.

I really look forward to the moral values and deeper meaning behind the films I watch, however I felt the film lacked in this area. The moral of the film is really to "love yourself" and to not hide it from others, but also trusting that "mothers know best." While I like the morals, it's not like Paw Patrol (2021) or Coco (2017), where the moral is both memorable and powerful (being emotion driven).

Overall the film is a typical movie-going experience, with some action, entertaining visuals and story, and upbeat soundtrack. Audiences will tend to laugh and enjoy the animation/color of the film more than they'll watch for the story/emotional value. Worth a family trip to the movies, but more-so a one-and-done film viewing experience. 6.5/10.

The impression of watching this movie is that DreamWorks tried to make their own version of Turning Red, which ended up being something boring and generic.

The plot is generic and highly predictable. The first trailer basically sums up the entire movie and if you've watched it before, you'll know how each event will play out.

The jokes are bland and not funny. I tried to force myself to laugh at at least one of them and I couldn't. Basically I kept looking at the clock counting how much time was left for the movie to end because of how uninteresting it is. I may not be the target audience, but the kids I know would struggle to stay awake watching it.

Basically I'm only giving it a 5 for the animation itself, which is good, but I wanted DreamWorks to keep the stylized 2D like in 'The Bad Guys' and 'Puss in Boots: The Last Wish'.

Dreamworks has created the b*stard child of Pixar's Luca and Turning Red. And it falls somewhere in the middle of those two film's quality.

It mercifully has far less annoying characters than Turning Red, and handles its near-identical adolescent themes of family loyalty, self-actualisation, and trust with far more tact and nuance than that film did.

But it borrows the other half of its concept and plot from Luca, and it lacks the genuine heart and soul that was the one saving grace of that film.

There's a lot to like about the implausibly gonzo concept and over the top elements and characters. But the generic, conveyor-belt-produced story is hard to look past, as there really is not a single aspect of what I just saw that has any staying power. I'll forget this quickly.

I'm 30 and this made me feel like an innocent 8 year old nice for someone that has autism and tries really hard to be a good person/wholesome often. This was a wonderful family film that had me captivated throughout and would recommend to anyone! Very well made I'm sure this and Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse will be nominated next awards season. Ruby Gilman, Teenage Kraken was a wonderful choice for Monday mystery movie that I hope when it does release fully a lot of appreciate it with their families or by themself. The flow, colors, story, voices and mature lessons were all great I should try to do more of the surprise movies.

This sure was...a movie. I don't really know what to say. The story was fine. The animation was fine. The music was was fine. The voice acting varied from decent to awful. The character designs were awful outside of the Gillmans and the mermaid. The dialogue was unbelievably cringe. That's about it. It had one of the most basic plots in Dreamworks library and that's saying a lot. I'm just struggling to find anything relevant to say for a review that's how lackluster this movie was.

I guess the training montage was quite fun and had cool visuals and sound design?

None of the characters really felt very relevant outside of Ruby, her grandmother and the mermaid. Everyone either had light relevance or was just used to fill in gaps and stretch the movie out to an hour and a half. There was an entire subplot with the sea captain guy and the men in the family which ultimately led to nothing and was mildly entertaining until you realise it's completely filler.

That's literally it. Maybe if I was a 10 year old girl then I could have had a better time but that doesn't change the fact that this movie had little to no depth or an interesting message or even plot. I can't believe I'm saying this but I almost fell asleep and that honestly never happens with me. Basically you can tell exactly why this was barely advertised... 4/10 since there were honestly more negatives than positives.