“I don’t wanna be free, I wanna be Pretty!”

Genre: YA Utopia As Dystopia
Release Date: 2024
Where I Watched: Netflix

Gist: In the probably distant future, children are raised away from their parents while they wait for their 16th birthday. At that milestone, they become “Pretty”, by having a absolute boatload of plastic surgery. Y’know, because if you’re pretty, you don’t have a single problem in the world? Yeah. Obviously, there’s a counter-culture on the down-low, hiding from this city’s influence. What will 15 year-old Tally choose for herself? Um, you know how this works, y’all.

Gotta say: Based on the series of novels by Scott Westerfeld, Uglies is your typical futuristic YA science fiction joint. It’s not bad, it’s not good, it’s just empty. Think the hollowness of Divergent with the possibilities of Maze Runner, but with characters so run of the mill it’s hard to care what happens to them, and a world that sounds intriguing, but is dumbed down by Pretty Is Good. (There are big ol’ hints at a more nefarious reason why the Pretties are created, but that tasty tidbit is pushed aside so hard I felt it slam into next week.)

The biggest problem? Casting gorgeous people as “Uglies”. Joey King, Chase Stokes, aren’t breathtaking? Yeah right. The most they can do to make these folks appear close to average is have them appear on camera with no makeup on. The horror of being a 9.9 instead of a 10! This is this film’s answer to putting glasses on an absolute smokeshow, just to say that that character is a loser. In who’s world, Hollywood? The cast feels like they’re going through the motions here, except for Laverne Cox, who plays the film’s Big Bad, Dr. Cable. This character is so evil her eyebrow is in a perpetual arch. I hope Cox’s eyebrows are fine now. 

With Uglies story, boilerplate is the name of the game. Obviously, the city is bad, the rebels are good, and there will be lots of soap-opera level misunderstandings that keep the plot moving, along with soap opera level dialogue that evolves narrative clichés into their final form. You’ll definitely be cringing at more than a few lines delivered at the climax. A sample? “You’re beautiful” is said to an Uglie. Because DUH. We all have eyes, hon.

You’ll guess what’s coming long before it does, but worse? You won’t care. Director McG seems to have lost the goofy fun he had with The Babysitter films, perhaps due to rumors of Westerfeld’s hands-on approach to his original story? Then again, there’s a lot of changes in this adaptation, so maybe it’s just that this film had been in production for so long, the joy leeched out.

Come for: The hope that YA dystopian stories could still be kinda cool.
Stay for: A boilerplate story that’s perfect for a sick day watch.