Just a week ago, the thriller Rebel Ridge climbed to number 1, and now the next Netflix original film has taken the top spot on the streaming service. Ugly is number 1 in over 60 countries.
This is the new science fiction adventure from director McG, who once made a name for himself with Charlie’s Angels and most recently directed the two The Babysitter films for the streamer. This time McG changes genre and adapts a Young adult story that Hollywood has wanted to make into a film since 2006The lead role is played by Joey King, who you may recognize from the Kissing Booth films and the series The Act.
If you are still unsure whether Ugly is worth it, you should take a look at the reviews …
In Ugly – Don’t lose your face the world is divided into 2 classes
Ugly (originally Uglies) is based on a novel by Scott Westerfeld, which was published in 2005. Just one year later, the first Hollywood studio secured the film rights. If the late film adaptation is successful, there are several books that would provide material for Ugly 2, 3, etc.
The story centers on 15-year-old Tally Youngblood (Joey King), who 300 years in the future is waiting for her 16th birthday. But not for the same reasons as today’s teenagers. In Tally’s future world, society is divided into Uglies and Pretties, and Tally hopes that on her 16th birthday she will receive the operation that will make her “beautiful” – a Pretty.
However, Tally is denied plastic surgery. The Department of Special Circumstances requires her to become a spy and track down renegade residents if she ever wants to become a Pretty.
The reviews of the Netflix film are catastrophic
The Netflix film is number 1 on the streaming service, but it has to rank a few levels lower in terms of reviews. The average ratings on the relevant aggregators Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are suboptimal to say the least (19 percent on tomatoes, 34 out of 100 points on Metacritic).
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The criticisms range from the casting (Joey King is too old for a teenager), to the young adult template of the plot, to the shallow message and the effects.
Nick Schrager watched the film for The Daily Beast:
Ugly is a paper-thin parable about the corruption of vanity and the virtue of tolerance and self-acceptance that follows a playbook that is beyond repair at this point. The irony is that that there is not much to be found beneath the shiny surface except platitudes, which are only suitable for those who have not yet reached puberty.
At Variety, Tomris Laffly writes:
Perhaps in 2005, when popular social media sites were in their infancy, using young people’s fake beauty projections as the basis for a dystopian story was a novel idea. Today, however, it seems instantly obsolete as soon as Tally looks in the mirror at the beginning and imagines what her own enhanced beauty would feel like. From there, Ugly never recovers.
By the way, the average rating in the Moviepilot community at the time of this article is miserable 4.3 out of 10 points.