
The overwhelming presence of dystopian novels in the 2010s YA media cannot be denied. It was the year of ‘The Hunger Games’ which began in 2012 the successful increase in popularity of works such as ‘Divergent’ and ‘The Giver’, with ‘Maze Runner’ being released later in 2014. These dystopian young adult book adaptations in Hollywood drew countless passionate fans who rushed to their theaters. Around the same time, Scott Westerfeld’s book series of ‘Uglies’ was released in the same fraternity but is only now directly adapted into a film. In ‘Uglies’, McG(‘Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, ‘The Babysitter) dreams of a spontaneous world where beauty is the ultimate leveler of any class, race, creed, or country’s prejudices.
There is no conflict in this world where everyone is perfect and pretty. On their 16th birthday, people receive a life-changing operation aimed at enhancing their physique which includes longer arms, bigger eyes, and no flaws. Those 15 and below are the uglies and they reside in grey brutalist compounds in the outskirts of the golden city of pretties. Tally (Joey King) is a few months away from the birthday of her best friend, Peris (Chase Stokes). Just before the date of the operation arrives, they sign an agreement vowing to keep in touch till they meet again. But when she cannot reach him, she leaves the forces of the city to seek him out. This, however, is not before Tally is treated as an ‘ugly’, so she becomes impatient in waiting for her operation.
At the same time, Tally meets Shay (Brianne Tju), another ugly girl who is also having her birthday that day. Hoverboards are used for entertainment, along with Thoreau’s Walden which they would read on the sly. However, when the day comes nearer, Shay declares that she has absolutely no plans of becoming pretty.
Instead, she intends to stay true to herself and escape to ‘The Smoke’ to meet a group of outcasts propagated by David (Keith Powers). After Shay, the more optimistic of the two does not get her procedure date, dr. Cable (Laverne Cox), a governing figure, knows of their bond as friends and holds Talli’s change for that. It is only after one finds Shay and brings her back to the city of its origin, that Tally shall be permitted to be beautiful. But when she infiltrates the world of The Smoke and meets the enigmatic David, Tally begins to be more puzzled about the nature of the world she lives in – a world that suggests there are only uglies and pretties – and so wonders if it is how it seems to be.
As far as the themes and the execution are concerned, “Uglies” has an outdated tone somewhere in its rightful mind. The world is a CGI playground and much of the film uses gimmicks in order, to place us in its futuristic setting. Although such surreal items as toothpaste pills, AI rings, and hoverboards to name a few are likely to be within the source text, the film’s almost offhand treatment of such props is pathetically weak. A totally different failure is ‘Uglies’ does not succeed in setting the emotional premise required for the adventure part which is destined to be climactic to its movement.
The high-stakes action-oriented scenes are lost and only appear to be very difficult to accomplish in both theory and practice.
In the context of the pacing, the film goes from a set piece to an exposition dump and back again in quick succession. There is no opportunity to take a breath and relax into the world McG is attempting to stitch together. In the same vein, the film’s thesis statement is also clear: depth is not real, and depth is not useful. There is nothing deep in that kind of thesis, and perhaps being simplistic is just fine considering the target audience, but even so, the film does little to captivate more than the shallow. It is a point that has already been made within the scope of the first 20 minutes, and for the rest of the runtime, it can be heard in throwing directions with the rest of the aides given to the story.
Considering the utter banalism of the script, performances aren’t particularly hard to assess. King makes playing the standard desperate and gritty wanna be a dystopian hero seem like a walk in the park. Cox as the wicked Dr Cable isn’t even acting, she just does cold things in a monotonous and lifeless yet evil-looking way. She is not written to be particularly interesting or frightening, yet the film treats her as if she is some sort of legendary evil which creates interference between what the film was trying to do and what it did.
The most believable performances in the movie are given by Powers’ David who, through the lore and intrigue of his character, actually possesses something that can be upturned, and Tju’s Shay who has more than the immediacy of the action to think about. Powers and Tju introduce a glimpse of emotional attachment into what in the end is a rather uninteresting, cliche-ridden movie.
“Uglies” is an antiutopian narrative that is of an Orwellian genesis but with rather faint conviction. Of its peers, it is a rather unlucky book in the literary ‘Young Adult Dystopia’ series. The film, with little new to say regarding its title point and lazy world construction, is in the end both escapist and entertaining.
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