Uglies review – Netflix’s drab and dated YA dystopian mess is not pretty

It’s been a few years since Hollywood’s rush for young adult dystopian franchises, from The Hunger Games to Divergent to The Maze Runner. Which makes Uglies, a new Netflix adaptation of Scott Westerfeld’s 2005 novel intended to kick off a new trilogy, already feel out of time. The exceedingly derivative film, directed by McG (Netflix’s Babysitter: Killer Queen) clearly tries to evoke its famous precedents, even hiring Divergent screenwriter Vanessa Taylor, along with Jacob Forman and Whit Anderson, for a script that takes broad swipes at the predominant dystopian YA themes: physical and emotional change, staying true to one’s values, remembering who the real enemy is.

Credit to Uglies for this: in the year 2024, plastic surgery and a beauty standard of body modification is a rich and relevant topic for young people. Unfortunately, Uglies renders its lessons in the most awkward, laughably flat and unconvincing way possible. As in The Hunger Games, this cruel post-apocalyptic society is ruled from a garishly colorful capital city surrounded by ruins, the elites physically distinguishable in dress, makeup and physical form from the rest of the human population, though that description is overselling the effectiveness of production design that is mostly CGI fireworks and lights. After parody-level exposition from star Joey King on the oil crisis preceding the apocalypse (such unfortunate pre-crisis souls are called “rusties”), the flower that saved everything (??) and the required “transformation” every citizen goes through at 16, we’re dropped into the boarding school dorm room of King’s Tally Youngblood.

The bare-bones, mostly exposition-led script gets to the point quickly: Tally and her best friend, Peris (Outer Banks’s Chase Stokes), could be more than friends, but his surgery is tomorrow, so they promise to meet a month later and never change who they are on the inside. This, of course, does not happen; post-surgery, the yassified Peris is cold, dismissive and uninterested in Ugly Tally, who escapes the “unwelcome presence detected” alarm – she is so obviously not a Pretty, the police are called – via a bungee vest and hoverboard. (There are many elements of this story that do not translate to screen as serious, chief among them the idea that any photogenic face in this movie, King’s especially, would be considered offensive.)

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During the escape, Tally befriends fellow student Shay (Brianne Tju), who intends to rebel against the forced surgery by joining a band of outsiders known as the Smoke. When Shay disappears, the coolly evil Dr Cable (Laverne Cox) gives Tally a deal: go find the Smoke, discover their secrets and bring back Shay, or be denied surgery and remain Ugly forever. Desperate to be Pretty, Tally – who, offhandedly, is maybe a hyper-competent action hero? – wheedles her way into the Smoke, quickly falls for leader David (Keith Powers) and his ethos of free thinking and egalitarian subsistence living, and learns about the lies of the Prettys. There are also several firefights, hyper-charged Prettys with superhuman abilities (including Peris) and regretful former plastic surgeons.

I’m describing this all flatly because there’s not much else to it, no meat on the bone of what could be an allegory of rejecting beauty standards (again, everyone is gorgeous) or questioning who benefits. Most elements of this adaptation are flat-out ridiculous in an unfun way: Stokes, at 31, cannot play a 16-year-old; multiple characters invoke Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond out of nowhere; viewers must endure several minutes of King’s Tally picking at her “flaws”, such as asymmetries, blue eyes and generally looking like a human. And it’s slightly queasy that Cox, one of Hollywood’s most visible trans actors, plays a villain whose surgeries “to make you a better you” are secretly toxic and brain-destroying.

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Like the Prettys’ modifications, everything feels synthetic, from the ample CGI in the cheap-looking Netflix house style (overlit, bright colors, flat sheen) to the dialogue stripped of any interesting, specific characteristics beyond necessity for plot and baldly stated theme. King, a likable screen presence stuck in middling Netflix movies for too long, at least brings some much-needed humanness to the proceedings; Tally may say and do stupid things and turn on a dime for plot, but King imbues her with some spunk. But she cannot over-emote her way to a solid, cheerable female protagonist, nor is her charisma enough to light any spark in this drab, better-on-paper mess. Though it supposedly argues against human beings turned into synthetic quasi-droids, Uglies feels like just another throwaway product.

• Uglies is now available on Netflix