Animation feature film “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kragen” might have felt a bit more refreshing if it came out a few years earlier at least. During my viewing, I was reminded of several other recent animation films including “Luca” (2020) and “Turning Red” (2022), and, despite some fun and entertainment, the film does not have much to distinguish itself in the bunch. I liked it to some degree without getting bored, but, folks, I also wished it to have a little more distinctive personality besides merely being a well-made product.

The story of the film mainly revolves around Ruby Gillman (voiced by Lana Condor), who is your average shy high school girl and turns out to have a good reason for her anxiety and insecurity. She and her family are actually sea creatures called, yes, Krakens, but they have hidden their true identity from others in their little seaside town while disguising themselves as “Canadians”. Although she has gone along with that well during last several years, Ruby has felt more awkward about hiding her true identity from her schoolmates than before as entering her adolescence years, and even hanging around with several misfit students in her school does not help her that much.

Nevertheless, Ruby is eager to experience and enjoy more things out there, and one of these things is incidentally the upcoming school prom to be held on a big boat, but there are two problems to deal with. First, she wants to ask a certain hunky boy in her school, but she is understandably hesitant about that because she is not so sure about whether he really likes her as much as she adores him. Second, her mother Agatha (voiced by Toni Collette) has firmly forbidden her from doing anything on or in the sea, and she is not so pleased when Ruby tries to persuade her to make an exception for the upcoming school prom.

Of course, Ruby soon comes to learn the reason why she has not been allowed to be on or in the sea throughout her whole life. When that hunky boy happens to fall into the sea by her little mistake, Ruby jumps into the sea despite her initial hesitation, and, what do you know, that causes her subsequent transformation into a big Kraken with shiny tentacles. Once she later manages to get smaller thanks to her mother’s timely intervention, she comes to learn more about her mother’s family via her jolly uncle Brill (voiced by Sam Richardson), and that eventually leads her to meeting her grandmother, the underwater queen who incidentally prefers to be called “Grandmamah”.

While Grandmamah is eager to show and teach her granddaughter more about her kingdom and the considerable power and ability of their family, Agatha still wants her daughter to stay outside the sea, and that certainly makes Ruby quite conflicted. She does not feel like being ready for succeeding her grandmother someday, but she also feels less comfortable with her current life outside the sea, and the only consolation comes from Chelsea (voiced by Annie Murphy), a pretty red-haired girl in the high school who turns out to have her own secret to hide just like Ruby and quickly befriends her because of that.

What follows next is predictable to say the least, but director Kirk DeMicco and his crew provides a number of visually wonderful underwater moments to engage us as Ruby explores more of her new world along the story. Although I must say that they do not look as amazing as the highlights of “Finding Nemo” (2003), they are still fairly gorgeous with lots of broad but colorful details to enjoy, and I especially like the splendid grandeur of Grandmamah’s big giant underwater palace.

In the end, the story culminates to an expected climactic part coupled with some action, and that is where I got a bit dissatisfied. Although it thankfully avoids being too rapid or flashy, the film could take some more time for building up its story and characters more in addition to letting us enjoy more of its mood and details before hurriedly heading to its big finale.

Anyway, the voice cast members of the film are solid in their respective parts. While Lana Condor, who has been mainly know for Netflix film “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” (2018) and its two following sequels, fills her archetype role with enough charm and pluck, and her good voice performance diligently carries the film to the end even while the film stumbles more than once later in the story. While ably supporting Condor, Toni Collette, Annie Murphy, Colman Domingo, Sam Richardson, Will Forte, and Jane Fonda have each own moment to shine, and Fonda certainly relishes every moment of hers as Ruby’s commanding but doting grandmother.

In conclusion, “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kragen” is often deficient in terms of storytelling and characterization, but it is a mostly competent product which has some enjoyable elements to hold our attention for a while. Sure, “Turning Red”, which is about a girl who can be transformed into a big red panda as entering her own problematic adolescent period, did a better job of presenting the anguish and anxiety of female adolescence with more wit and imagination, and “Luca”, which is incidentally the coming-of-age tale of a sea creature boy, has more style and personality in comparison. Nevertheless, “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kragen” is not entirely without fun and amusement at least, and I will not stop you from spending your spare time on it.