5,002 / 5,583 (10%)
Young Adult cinema strikes again with Netflix’s adaptation of Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series.
Tally Youngblood (Joey King) inhabits a future world where climate change and war have wrecked the earth. A brilliant scientist (Laverne Cox) concocted a way to bring peace by developing a treatment that makes everyone beautiful on their 16th birthday, alleviating all human insecurities and competition. The Pretties (people who now appear as social media glamour filters) live in the city, a neon-colored futuristic dreamland that plays out like Disney Channel hedonism. Teenagers live in a gray, concrete compound in colorless studio apartments. Imagine if Foucault developed an elite private boarding school. Tally is harmlessly rebellious, sneaking out past curfew, taking friends to raid the kitchen, and slinking about to catch glimpses of her perfect life to come.
Following the template of YA fiction before it, Tally’s male friend Peris (Chase Stokes) undergoes the change before her and seems aloof and indifferent to his former BFF. In expected subgenre fashion, Youngblood is befriended by Shay (Brianne Tju), who seeks refuge in an underground movement known as the Smoke. Part Hunger Games and part Divergent and every other dystopian teen movie, our pubescent protagonists discover the truth about their world and reveal new, wonderful traits buried within themselves.
Director McG (Charlie’s Angels, 2000 and Terminator Salvation, 2009), whose calling card is using style to suffocate substance, succeeds in his goals and is aided by an apathetic script. Each character is a hollow shell of Young Adult archetypes and each plot movement is almost cynical in its predictability. The Pretties world has TikTok levels of CGI sophistication, the dialogue is primarily expository, and the actors are drained of life. Joey King and Brianne Tju do possess a charm that manages to lift them above the rest of Uglies. A natural sensual chemistry simmers from Tally and Shay, but Netflix chickens out and gives us prototypical fare, fearful of risk or having a personality.
King and Tju offer Young Adult dystopian science fiction fans two enjoyable leads, while McG does offer some clean action–adventure set pieces with a sharp visual edge at times. Otherwise, Uglies is a disappointing misadventure. Only 3 books left to go.
