Netflix’s “Uglies” was released in early September, starring Joey King and Chase Stokes. This movie is for teens, it touches on challenging themes such as conformity, individuality, beauty and influence. Even though this movie is for teens, anybody can watch this film. The themes and genre make it a must watch for anybody.
“Uglies” by Scott Westerfeld was just recently turned into a movie. The movie is a dystopian and futuristic genre. We follow a 15 turning 16 year old girl named Tally. Everybody in their society gets to have a surgery at 16 that allows them to change anything they want about their body to make them pretty. When they become pretty, they go to a city for ‘pretties,’ and forget all about the ‘ugly’ part of the city. Tally’s best friend named Peris turns 16 before her and leaves to become pretty. When he does, he forgets all about Tally, but Tally meets a new friend named Shay, and they become inseparable. Shay talks about leaving for a safe haven called The Smoke, where they don’t have to be pretty. Tally has a mental battle for whether she wants to go or not.
One strength of the movie is that they keep it very similar to the book. Many movies in the dystopian genre struggle with keeping the movie and book the same, but this movie didn’t seem to have drastic changes to the plot.
I have read and seen both the book and the movie and I think they did a very good job at keeping the movie very similar to the book. In other movies, like these they tend to cut out entire scenes from the book, but in “Uglies,” they were able to keep almost all scenes and the ones that weren’t kept are not the most important of scenes.
Another strength of this movie is the important messages and themes presented. The themes are talked about in a subtle way but they are things people can relate to. Some themes presented in the movie are body image issues, conformity instead of individuality and influence.
“I would because there are themes in there about looks not being everything, and how you should always be yourself.” Freshman Sadie Grecian said.
One weakness is the movie was predictable from the beginning with how the plot would go. From the beginning, it was obvious that Tally was going to break some rules and lose people along the way. It was predictable because of the genre it was made in, there was no big plot twist or anything, its structure was exactly like any other dystopian movie.
Junior Henry Collyard said the movie was “predictable from the beginning” after the movie was in the futuristic genre.
Another weakness was the cringe and confusing dialogue and plot. The way the movie was written almost makes it a guilty pleasure movie. The things the characters said and did made the movie hard to watch at points. The movie could also be confusing at times, the movie seemed to jump around a little bit and skip explaining why the characters were in those locations.
Sometimes, the movie was really confusing and weird Collyard said.
Another weakness of the movie was the actors and actresses casted in the movie are not ‘ugly’. They are supposed to be ugly in the movie, but in real life, they are in commercials for beauty products and on covers. Some of the actors and actresses are supposed to have certain features and they don’t have them, which is a problem because those features are an important part of the movie.
“Everybody casted in the film was conventionally attractive. So why would they be ugly in the film, when in real life, they are on magazines,” Grecian said.
Overall, this movie did not live up to expectations. The movie is a bit cringey and hard to understand that can make it hard to follow. Uglies has good themes in it but the execution of the characters and plot holes make this movie not live up to its full potential. This film is good for a guilty pleasure watch but not if you want to watch a high quality film.
