(courtesy IMP Awards)
If you have ever gone through that messy period somewhere in your teens, and let’s face it, you must have unless some god or another equally mythical being simply threw you down to earth with creational bombast, you will be well acquainted with that sense of who you are feeling all muddled and far from being set.
Rationally, it makes sense; you are, after all, growing up and that doesn’t just involved everything getting physically bigger and more adult, but your emotions, thoughts and sense of self finding their way to something that is far more definably and expressively you.
But it doesn’t happen overnight, does it, and as we join the eponymous protagonist of Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, a 2023 film which employs, quite inarguably, the best surname known to man, woman and child – yes, yes, it’s this reviewer’s family name and the reason why this animated gem attracted some attention in the first place – we find a fifteen-year-old woman in the throes of one of those great transitions that mark the teenage years.
Ruby wants to go to Junior Prom, and while she and her friends, BFF Margot (Liza Koshy), gamer Trevin (Eduardo Franco) and goth Bliss (Ramona Young), who invoke “squad solidarity!” anytime they need the boosting power of the collective, are determined to make anti-patriarchal statement by going as a group, Ruby’s overprotective but loving mum, well-known Oceanside real estate agent, Agatha (Toni Collette) doesn’t want her going at all.
Why is that, you might wonder?
Is the prom a den of possible iniquity? Is dancing the way to darker and more terrible evils? Does Agatha fear that her loving if idiosyncratically academic daughter might get carried away on a wave of peer excitement?
None of the above, my friends; in fact, this case of parental helicoptering revolves solely around the fact that Agatha wants her daughter nowhere near the sea, an edict that has caused Ruby and her friends, especially her friends, to miss out on all kinds of fun throughout their formative years, something they point out to their bestie when Agatha’s mum, as predicted, turns down her daughter’s TikTok-ian video begging to be allowed to go to Prom.
That, once again, is that , right?
Hold on, not so fast, because while Agatha is a good and dutiful daughter, she’s also a teenager who wants to be part of the gang, and when she finds out Margot has a date and Trevin and Bliss are planning on going together, she’s easily persuaded to break the no-Prom injunction and sneak along anyway to an event that is, and this is where Agatha’s concern kicks in to high hear, on a boat on the harbour.
All she has to do – ha! All she has to do; this one is a biggie – is ask the cute skateboarder she’s tutoring in maths, Connor (Jaboukie Young-White) to the dance and she’s set; not only will she make a defining statement about who she is apart from her mother, but she’ll have the love of her life by her side.
What could possibly be better?
Well, a proposal to go to the Prom that doesn’t end in Connor and her not quite waltzing down the road to love, true love, and instead setting off a chain of events that establishes that Ruby is a great deal more than even her earnest ambitions could take into account.
She knows, of course, that she’s a kraken, no headlines there, thank you, and has spent years having to be someone in the closet – anyone who’s ever felt they’ve had to hide their true selves will find a lot with which to meaningfully and richly identify in Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken which absolutely nails what it’s like to live a lie amongst your peers – but just how kraken she is, doesn’t become clear until she plunges into the harbour to save Connor and discovers that she’s a whole lot MORE than she even began to bargain for.
The scenes right after this transformative moment are a joy because they capture so beautifully, hilariously and movingly well just what it’s like when you come face-to-face with the truth of who you are as a teenager, and simultaneously want to die a little or a lot and get excited too.
The fear makes sense but then once that’s passed, so does the excitement of knowing who you are, and while the road to expressing that in any public way is hugely involving, and in Ruby’s case very hard-to-miss and very public, it eventually sets Ruby, and by extension her family of mum Agatha, dad Arthur (Colman Domingo) and seven-year-old brother, Sam (Blue Chapman), free and sets her on the path to an authentic life that is everything she hoped for and more.
The beauty of Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken is that it doesn’t, for even a single, colour-saturated frame overstay its animated welcome.
From the smart and snappy running time of just 1.5 hours to a screenplay that deftly balances hilarity and heart to equally impactful effect – and in so doing, avoids that overbearing, treacly sentimental messaging the bedevils less masterfully executed animated features – and characters who pop off the screen with such vitality that you are actually invested in the lives of all the characters, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken has it all.
It beautifully encapsulates what it’s like to be struggling to be yourself and to find out who you are and how utterly revolutionary and lifechanging that is; when everything seems to be all across the shop and on the table, finding out the truth about yourself can be, as it is for Ruby, terrifying and overwhelming, then elating, and after some rather ill-judged decisions, liberating to an wonderfully expansive degree.
Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken captures all of that and more, and the giddy joy of it is that in amongst the eye-popping colour and audaciously imaginative world-building where everything people think about oceanic mythology is tossed playfully and yet thoughtfully on its had, we have a protagonist who matters, who has huge things on her plate, and who, after an extraordinary adventure, comes to peace with who she is, where she its into her world and what that will mean going forward.
It’s fun AND it’s genuinely meaningful, and honestly who can ask for more from an animated feature than that?