Uglies

So this film is fine. It sets up a standard future world we have all seen before. Typical Government villain. It does nothing new with the beauty argument. It's all just copy and paste from another script.

The main characters are all beautiful before they get the surgery. Which really hurts the logic of the movie. They needed to explain why getting mandatory surgery actually helps the world. Instead we get one paragraph at the start which just says that it does, and moves on.

They introduce hover boards which everyone in the world should have, but nope; Just these two teenagers who happen to have this super rare technology. And one of them gets given it.

They then introduce magically bracelets which protect them from falls. Might make sense after they get the boards, but nope. Main character just happens to be wearing it, when she needs it after falling off a building. But it then fails to work for the first fall from the board?

There are some nice shots of the future city which really help. But this entire world is just that one city. We never learn about the rest of the planet.

Parents abandon their children. We get some emotional manipulation line later in the film that you could say justifies this action. But it's left for you, the audience to connect the dots on that one.

Overall it's worth a background watch while doing something else. And as a straight to Netflix movie, it's above average. But the writers could have done more with the concept and I just feel like they were treading through the motions on this one, and more imagination was needed to elevate the script beyond the formulaic.

It is centuries into the future. After many global catastrophes, the world has reached a new utopia where everybody gets remade into their perfect selves upon turning 16. 15 year old Tally Youngblood (Joey King) is eager to have her change and a smaller nose.

This is a dumb YA premise. The title is even dumber. I do wonder if there is a better way to do this. The glowy suits are a good start and I like the eyes. The premise should be making people more than pretty. They should be all similar and be bigger and glowier. My best guess is that this is written by some Beverly Hills kids who grew up obsessed with plastic surgery. This could be satire if McG knew what the word means. At least, Joey King is willing to make fun of her nose.

If one ignores the stupid premise, this becomes a run-of-the-mill YA dystopian franchise. It follows a lot of the standard elements. The hoverboard scenes look real bad with early 2000's CGI. I just can't get over the basic premise of plastic surgery saving the world. It says more about Hollywood than anything else.

First of there isn't a single ugly person in the cast.

The concept of everyone prioritizing being pretty made no sense because how does it contribute to the development of society in the movie? Like you become pretty and that's all? How do these people even make a living do you just become pretty and party all the time?

Because that's what it looked like "Get pretty and just live your life". Overall the movie had some good CGI and the action scenes were okay.

The whole concept of the movie felt a bit like they were trying to give off some Hunger Games vibe and the idea of the rebellion being led by the smoke(David) felt kinda off because it would have made more sense if his parents were the leaders of the rebellion seeing as they were the first to actually leave the city.

Man, this movie is such a disappointment. It's so so bad. I hate to be this person, but they deviated so far from the book it's almost its own entity. I understand when they need to change certain things to make it work for the screen, but they completely changed story lines and character arcs. There's almost no noticeable differences between the "uglies" and the "pretties". The pretties just look like they have a smoothing instagram filter on, very basic. It's not even good CGI. They shoehorned things in from later in the series making a convoluted mess. It's obvious they had no intention of making any more than the one movie, which is annoying. Why start something you have no plans of finishing?? After the first 20 minutes of this mess I came to IMDB and found out it was directed by McG and I'm not surprised. The dude hasn't made anything worthwhile in 20 years. What an absolute joke. I hope Netflix loses a bunch of money on this junk. They've become the worst of all the streaming services, just continuously churning out literal garbage while they cancel the only decent shows they have after one season.

You will not run into any surprises in this dystopian teen soap opera of a film. It contains a lot of tired tropes and cliched sci-fi scenarios, and doesn't really offer a new spin on anything. The plot is ripped straight out of the 1976 classic sci-fi film (and the novel that proceeded it) Logan's Run. Meanwhile, the main conceit of the film is straight out of a Twilight Zone episode: What would you do to fit in with the "pretty" crowd?

Of course, everyone is pretty in this world already, as the cast consists entirely of fresh-faced, fit young adults -- no one is overweight, disabled, or disfigured. The only blemish in the entire CGI-filled world is a scar on the hand. (The horror!) All of this would be forgivable if the acting and writing were on par with, say, The Hunger Games -- another YA series with a similar dystopian feel. Alas, that is not the case, as dramatic lines like, "Yup, I'm David." are the best that the film has to offer.

Plus, the unsatisfying conclusion seems to exist only to set up a sequel -- ugh! Netflix has a very mixed bag lately when it comes to sci-fi, the most underserved genre on the streaming service. On the one hand, they gave us the amazing first season of Three-Body Problem and Adam Sandler's underappreciated masterpiece, Spaceman. On the other hand, they waste a lot of time and money making hot garbage like this film or Zack Snyder's poorly conceived two-part Rebel Moon.

Netflix, not all sci-fi has to be super-cerebral, but it's definitely not about CGI and "pretty" characters. At its core, sci-fi exists to hold aa mirror up to us, exploring morality by posing the question of what humans would do in extraordinary circumstances. By taking the characters out of the everyday, it allows us to more closely examine what it truly means, at its core, to be human. But this movie falls far short of that goal, offering us only a generic story that we've seen far too often already. So, please, Netflix, do not greenlight the sequel to this movie.