Imagine living in a dystopian world where it’s your job to save everyone. Feeling the weight of the world on your shoulders leaves you no choice but to do your best.. That’s how a typical dystopian movie goes, but Uglies is a botched version of that.
Before watching the movie I had seen people on social media compare it to movies like The Hunger Games and Divergent. I wouldn’t even categorize it as a dystopian movie. I had high expectations considering I love dystopian movies, but this movie was incomparable to the other franchises…in a bad way.
Instead of the typical, “teenager needs to save the world by themselves,” Uglies tries to convey the message that no one is ugly and everyone is beautiful in their own way. I do not disagree with that message, but they did not execute it very well.
In the film, the day you turn 16, you undergo a life-changing surgery making you go from an “ugly” to a “pretty.” The main character Tally, played by Joey King, is “ugly”. Her dream is to live the glamorous life that the “pretties” get to live. Her best friend Peris, played by Chase Stokes, is almost 16 and ready to go out into the world. However, Tally still has three months of being “ugly.”
Tally and Peris promise each other that they will never change, and make a promise that in exactly one month after Peris becomes “pretty”, they will meet at their spot under the bridge that separates the “uglies” from the “pretties.” But the entire month after Peris’s sixteenth birthday he has been radio silent.
That story builds until the last twenty minutes of the movie. It felt so boring and uneventful until the very end. To be honest, I didn’t enjoy a single part of this movie.
The dialogue was extremely predictable, and the green screens when they were flying on the hoverboards were terrible. The only joy I got out of this movie was predicting the next lines and laughing about how terrible the script was.
This movie had so much potential, but it was absolutely wasted.
