Thistopian Society.

Uglies is a movie that is exactly as moronic as you’d expect from a film adaptation of a young adult novel. Directed by Joseph McGinty Nichol who did a much better job during the days of The Babysitter and Charlie’s Angels (the original).

The movie stars Joey King who you’ll remember as The Prince in one of my favorites; Bullet Train. Joey King plays Tally Youngblood, a 15 year old girl who just wants to fit in with society and be pretty. Joey King is many things, and one of them is not a particularly convincing 15 year old at 25. Regardless, Tally is the picturesque brainwashed kid growing up in a dystopic shit hole. In this world violence has stopped after society figured out that cosmetic surgery is all people need to be happy. So on their 16th birthday, everyone gets surgery.

There’s probably more to the surgery than just cosmetic enhancements, but I’ll leave that for the movie to explain. The funny thing about movies like this is that they’re ridiculously superficial. The people under 16 are called “uglies” and the kids who receive their surgery are called “pretties” who get to live in the city. But of course the cast already picks actors who are conventionally attractive but not flawless, with little imperfections here and there. It’d make a lot more sense if the character was a teenage Kathy Griffin, she’s got a face only a mother could love. Having an actually ugly character who the general audience can relate to.

Tally’s boyfriend/friend Peris (Chase Stokes) becomes prettified first, which is fancy talk for they make his eyes blue and fix his nose and lift his cheeks. Tally meets a young girl named Shay (Brianne Tju) who despite being 15 in the film is also in her mid 20s in real life. Shay tells Tally about this place called The Smoke where people live free and everyone appreciates each other for their value as humans and what’s on the inside that counts. The Smoke is led by a hunk of man gravy named David (Keith Powers) and that’s not a creepy thing to say that because Keith Powers is 32 and that makes him three years younger than me.

I love seeing Orange is the New Black alumni in films, and most importantly I love Laverne Cox who plays the dystopic leader Dr. Cable. Cox is hot and a damn fine actor, and she sells her roles perfectly. Dr. Cable convinces Tally that The Smoke is a horrible terrorist group and David is planning on upper-decking the toilet of the Pretties with the kind of deuce that will rock their society. He’s going to drop the kind of bomb that makes people feel really weird, or do something else or something. I don’t know. The point is, that Tally is sent to The Smoke to find David and signal the definitely bad guys to come grab everyone.

I’d like to point out that several actors in this movie as the “uglies” are straight up models in real life. The people who live outside of the cities are called “rusties” because this is a young adult novel from the mid 2000s therefore everything must be written like the target audience is kindergartners. The funniest part of this movie is knowing that Netflix is probably going to shitcan it before the second movie comes out and this does not end on anything remotely satisfying, even if you were enjoying the film as it goes.

The beauty of Uglies is that the film in itself mocks superficiality while itself being entirely superficial. It’s a shallow story in a genre that has rapidly lost relevance with the movie-going public that betrays its own nonsense through sheer cowardice in its choice of casting. Characters who are way too old to be playing young teenagers filling roles that they are visibly not suited for, carrying around barely enough personality to fit a teaspoon, all for a completely soulless movie ironically with no soul to it.

The CG on the pretties is so bad that it makes them look infinitely more hideous than the characters the film calls uglies. The true dystopia of Uglies is realizing a world where everyone, including the good guys, are boring.

It’s a big waste of an hour and 45 minutes.

Rating: D