I feel like this movie has had an interesting time leading up to its release. I think I first heard about it around the time Disney’s The Little Mermaid live-action remake was coming out. The funny part is when Disney was releasing a movie about nice mermaids Dreamworks decided to counter that with a movie about how mermaids are evil. So, it already had my attention. Although, I do know that a lot of people had just never heard of this movie at all. that included some of the people that saw the movie with me. So, either the marketing for this movie wasn’t as good as they had hoped or they just weren’t paying attention.
We follow Ruby Gillman who has been told that she should not go near the ocean all her life. Although one day she is forced to dive in and discovers that she is the Kraken princess. She realizes that she has been lied to her whole life and tries to tread her own path as she makes her way through this new revelation and High school prom.
This is a fun family movie. I feel like it had something for everyone which was good. There were a lot of fun and relevant jokes to today’s society. I feel like when movies try that kind of humour it can come off as very cringe, this movie did it fairly well. It wasn’t the main focus of what was going on and made me laugh quite a few times. Any time you might have a question or find a plothole the movie seemed to answer it in a very comedic way. For example, how come no one notices that Ruby Gillman is not a human if she looks blue? Well, she just says her family is Canadian.
I really liked the art direction of the movie. They used a lot of colour and lighting to their advantage. Although the environments and characters had distinct looks and colours they weren’t afraid to have some darker night scenes. They used the lighting to create some really great images. The animation overall also looked great as it is a DreamWorks project. The fact that Ruby and her family are also Krakens lets them do things that humans normally wouldn’t do and let the animators have some free reign with their characters which was fun to see.
The soundtrack was great! There were a lot of familiar hits and some new ones I hadn’t heard before that will be going on my playlist. There were some scenes that just focused on the music and animation as Ruby explored the ocean or got ready for some events, that were just fun to watch.
If you want to get a better feel for the movie check out the trailer below. I would recommend giving this movie a watch!
-Jared Gomes
