UglyDolls (2019)

I’m in a difficult position.  I like animated features, but not all of them.  I also realize that school will be letting out soon, which means that the theaters for animated features will soon be full of small, noisy children.  Do I se an animated film just to see an animated film?  I regret to inform you that in the case of UglyDolls, the answer was yes.  I had seen the coming attractions.  I knew that it was going to be about being true to yourself.  I also knew that the best part of it would probably be the music.  I went to see it anyway.

The movie is about several dolls who live in Uglyville.  Specifically, they’re the rejects from an unnamed doll factory.  All they know is this nice little seaside village where they’re all happy being who they are.  Many of the characters are either named for what they are or some defining feature.  The leader, Ox, has one good eye and one exed out eye.  (O  X)

Moxy is one of the residents of Uglyville.  She desperately wants to be adopted by a human, so that she can feel a child’s love.  Alas, most of her fellow residents realize that this is not possible.  Ox set up Uglyville expressly for this purpose. (The alternative was being shredded and recycled.)  She leads a few of her fellow dolls through the pipe that brings in new UglyDolls to find the Institute of Perfection.

The Institute is where the dolls are supposed to go.  They’re all models and have some great career like scientist or architect.  Once they go through training to avoid imperfections, they’ll be sent to live with a child.  Moxy realizes that this is her chance to get what she’s always dreamed of.  Standing in her way is Lou, the doll who trains the other dolls in preparation for The Gauntlet, the final test to see if a doll is ready to go to The Real World.

There’s nothing really unpredictable about the movie.  You know moxie is going to have her heart broken by the truth only to come back and get what she wants.  This is so close to the template for other similar movies, it wouldn’t take much to make into a satire.  There’s the defeated hero who makes a comeback.  There’s a big secret that gets revealed about a main character.  There’s even one perfect character that’s revealed to have an imperfection.  In the end, everyone is happy.

If you’re an adult going to see the movie, it’s probably going to be as a chaperone for a young child.  It’s going to be entertaining, but not memorable.  The movie is definitely geared towards children.  I wasn’t aware of this, but the movie is based on a series of dolls.  The dolls were first released almost 20 years ago.  I’m not sure why the movie was released so late relative to the toys’ release.  Even considering that the movie spent several years in development, it’s still a long time.

The good news is that it’s going to be fairly safe for children.  There’s maybe one or two scenes where there’s some sort of mortal danger, but even that’s not too scary.  Adults will be entertained mostly by the music.  It was the one aspect that was most memorable for me.  If you’ve seen the coming attractions, you know that says something.

IMDb page

Hidden Figures (2016)

A lot of things happened before I was born.  I’ve always known small computers that could do calculations at a rate impossible for a human.  Before iPhones, there were machines that would fill a room.  Before those machines were human calculators like Katherine G. Johnson.  She, along with Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, worked for NASA when NASA was trying to put a man in orbit.

Everyone knows John Glenn.  He’s the man that America put into orbit.  Not everyone knows the team that put them there.  There were buildings of scientists trying to figure out the math necessary to not only put John Glen in orbit, but get him back safely.

There was a very narrow window with which they had to work.  Too steep and angle and he’d burn up on reentry.  If his descent was too gradual, he’d bounce off the atmosphere and go back into space.  There was also the issue of making sure he landed in the ocean.  Given the magnitude of what they were doing, the smallest of errors could be catastrophic.  This is assuming they can even figure out the math necessary to do the calculations in the first place.

Being that the movie is based on historical events, I’m not ruining anything by stating that John Glenn completes his mission safely.  Being that it’s a movie, I don’t think I’m giving away anything by stating that some liberties were taken.  Yes, Glenn specifically requested that Johnson be the one to verify the computer’s calculations.  Word is, though, that this was actually done well before his mission.  You don’t risk someone’s life like that unless you’re certain.

The movie isn’t so much about the history that everyone knows.  It’s about the people that never really got the credit that they deserved.  Johnson was both a woman and a person of color when culture didn’t favor either.  It still doesn’t necessarily favor either, but the movie shows Johnson having to run to a separate building to use the ladies’ room.

Jackson wanted to become an engineer, but had to go to court just to be allowed to take the courses necessary to even be considered.  Likewise, Vaughn was trying to become a supervisor.  She was already doing the work of a title that she was repeatedly denied.  She also saw the writing on the wall when the IBM computers were being installed.  She took it upon herself to learn FORTRAN for the job security.  (She also took it upon herself to get the machines working.)

All three women have to go above and beyond just to get noticed.  They are all fortunate to have superiors that eventually listen to reason, or at least recognize that the women are correct.  Vaughn might not have been taken seriously had she not actually gotten the computers to actually work.

The movie, like the women, walked a tight rope.  In several scenes, they have to curtail their anger.  Instead of getting mad, they get better.  There are moments when they’re told no, but they’re also eventually told yes.  They do make permanent progress, not only for themselves, but for others.  The one scene that may best exemplify this is Jackson telling a judge that she wants to be the first female engineer, just as he was first in a lot of respects.  The judge is impressed enough to grant her request.

I’d recommend watching it if only to learn who the people were.  I find it odd that it took more than fifty years for a movie to be made about this.  The Apollo and Gemini missions have been shown in film.  Those instances have usually focused on the people who went up into space.  There’s so much more to the story.

IMDb page