Uglies

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.

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.

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.

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.

As many have pointed out, there wasn't enough run time to build the narrative and characters. The only character they slightly done justice was Shay, Brianne done really well in portraying her.

Whoever designed the set/Architecture WELL DONE, literally almost exactly how I have imagined it in my head for the last 10 years, even down to the constant fireworks.

1. "The uglies are not ugly enough" Surprisingly I disagree. I just think they haven't portrayed the pretties as radical enough, it lacked the outrageousness and complexity of the actual appearance and personality change. The uglies are meant to look NORMAL, eg. Literal models in old magazines didn't compare to pretties in the book. Although I do agree that Joey King doesn't quite suit the book perception of Squint, I can however, see their thought process (I'm looking at you people who keep calling her ugly)

2. "We never learn about the rest of the planet", yeah the readers didn't learn about that for a while either, and neither does the characters. It's actually a main plot line in one of the future books so be patient.

3. "How are they hoverboarding on water" This is where the narratives quickness and budget ruined the technology and dystopian aspect, I was looking forward to this part the most, however it all lacked clarity with too much action.

4. I've seen quite a few comments and social media posts mentioning that Tally and Shay have better chemistry than any of the others, this is the same in the books and is a really important aspect as they develop their friendship and platonic love. I really enjoyed that they adapted this aspect of the characters, however ended up lacking in others.

All in all I am not surprised it is quite cheesy, it is a dystopian movie with a plot written in the mid 2000s, I definitely think with a longer run time or series they could've smashed it, it would make the special effects appear less overwhelming and the narrative denser and consistent, not leading to confusion about the plot or meaning behind the movie. With our social media today, I think the adaption of this movie is more important now than ever, they just lacked the cinema substance.