Los feos

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.

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.

I don't get what some of the reviewers here expected from this movie. Who gets on Netflix in search of a cinematic masterpiece and thinks "Ah, this Netflix-produced teen action flick by someone who calls themselves McG sure will be it". 😂

This is exactly what you'd expect- just a fun, mindless modern day TV movie with average acting, average effects and lots of plot holes, but sufficiently engaging and entertaining. Perfect for a night in when you're tired and can't be bothered to follow anything more complex.

If you're looking for something ambitious, intelligent and well crafted there are enough choices out there. This isn't it, and it doesn't ever pretend to be.

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.

Joey King is 25 years old and in this film she is supposed to be 15. Other than paying the actors, it seems they spent $1000 on a green screen and another $50 for the production team. I guess it might be fine if you want to throw something on for your kids to rot their brain, but I'd definitely give this one a pass. I would not recommend this to any one who values their time. These kids are literally kick flipping hoverboards and the whole show is based on "feeling pretty" with a surgery performed when they turn 16. To say unreal expectations of the world, and yourself, would be a massive understatement.