Uglies

2 outta 5

Uglies is a YA novel adaptation that really doesn’t offer anything particularly good. It feels cobbled together from other sci-fi dystopian franchises and that bubble burst a few years ago. The central hook, that people in a dystopian future society undergo mandatory, mind-controlling cosmetic surgery, feels basic. Even the action, such as it is, is flat and uninspired, which is a shame because Director McG has some sweet action under his belt with two Charlie’s Angels movies and Terminator: Salvation. This Uglies is so lazy it even just straight up steals an iconic scene from The Matrix at one point. Full of bland characters, it has the audacity to end on a To Be Continued cliffhanger, threatening a second film that will certainly never happen. If this sounds like a waste of time, it is.

In the future, people in high tech cities at their 16^th birthday undergo cosmetic surgery to make themselves Pretty. Before the surgery they are known as Uglies. A teenager, Tally Youngblood (Joey King) is waiting for her day when her friend, Peris (Chase Stokes), undergoes the procedure and then proceeds to quickly forget her. She meets a carefree new friend, Shay (Brianne Tju), who loves to hoverboard and leaves the city to go meet with Earth loving revolutionaries called the Smoke led by the mysterious David (Keith Powers). When Shay goes missing, the prominent Doctor Cable (Laverne Cox) tells Shay to discover the Smoke. But when Tally finds them, she learns more about the nefarious procedure to make Pretties and how her world is being manipulated.

The rip offs throughout the film are very easy to spot. When a movie is good, it can transcend its various influences to become something original. When a movie is lame like Uglies, it just feels lazy. This feels like a rip off of Divergent with the fancy futuristic skyscrapers and the folks living off the land, which is a terrible series to copy because that movie series didn’t get to finish (probably something that Uglies is going to eventually emulate). The future modified human society is a hacky old cliché. Even the main character’s name, Tally Youngblood, feels like it could have been taken from a YA Dystopian cliché book. Probably one of the most egregious rip off is when the main characters are trapped and rescued by a helicopter and (aside from using a flamethrower) it is framed and paced almost exactly like when Neo saves Morpheus with a helicopter in The Matrix. It is shocking how this plot flops around to a blatant To Be Continued ending; nothing is resolved, and Tally is set up to be rescued to continue the plot in another film. Like anyone in the audience would give a damn.

Joey King is a very good actor in things like a broken schemer in the miniseries The Act or as a snippy assassin in Bullet Train. But her Netflix output seems to banish her to forever playing high school characters even though King is in her mid-20s and in creaky movies like this and three Kissing Booth films. She becomes enamoured with the Smoke’s way of life and probably has a crush on the hunky leader, David. There really isn’t a justification for why she switches sides until some wise old folks tell her the blatantly obvious that the Pretty procedure is another system of government control. Also, the premise is that Uglies become Pretties, but King isn’t exactly unattractive. Also, people who go through the procedure look like they’re made of plastic. Fairly simplistic notion, but this isn’t high art.

Stokes is the buddy who goes from Ugly to Pretty then becomes a boring mindless warrior. The outfits of the soldier guys look like something the production stole from the leftovers bin of Tron: Legacy. As Tally’s new friend, Shay, Tju is a rebellious teen cliché on a hoverboard which is how like in lame high school stories the skateboarding kid is supposed to be the rebel. Later in the film she just cries about where Tally’s loyalties are, although she does get slightly more interesting when she gets transformed. Cox plays the evil doctor and is kind of transparently evil so any of the big revelations don’t resonate very much. The leader of the Smoke revolutionary group, David, is a bland, random guy who likes to make speeches about the government being evil. His big revelation that the government is poisoning the environment is also not very surprising. He does get to be a part of probably the movie’s only joke is when he reveals himself back to Tally’s friends in the city, the guy who doesn’t want to believe the Smoke is real, says dumbfounded to David, “You don’t exist!”

Overall, Uglies is just a half assed version of several other YA Dystopian fantasies that is so lackluster it makes the Hunger Games movies feel like masterpieces. Pretty much everything here has been done better before and even King has been in better action movies like The Princess or Bullet Train. Maybe Netflix will finally give her a better franchise the third time around and stop having her play high school students.