Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic If you’re going to make a movie about a kraken — those giant multi-tentacled sea monsters believed to wrestle ships from below — then computer animation is hands down the way to go.
The trouble with doing so at a major American studio is that it comes with the imperative to turn these fantastical creatures into cutesy-wootsy kid-movie fodder, which is precisely what DreamWorks Animation does with the reasonably clever myth-twisting toon “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken.” The creative team’s high-concept take suggests “Twilight” as a (literal) fish-out-of-water comedy, wherein a family of blue-skinned squid-things attempt to pass as human.
Fifteen years ago, Flora (voiced by Toni Collette) and Peter (Colman Domingo) abandoned the ocean to raise their kids on land.
Despite the obvious hurdles — their conspicuous cerulean tint, floppy limbs and invertebrate status — they’ve been reasonably successful at blending in.
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