What a God awful idea for a film. Following in the money grabbing young adult trend that was the era of Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Maze Runner, someone wrote a film about a future where everyone gets to have plastic surgery at 16 to make them perfect. Then, their problems are solved. Everyone under 16 is a child. Oh, sorry, I read that wrong. Everyone under 16 is one of the “Uglies”. You know, a regular person just living their life? Joey King is in this for some reason, despite being 25 years old. It’s almost like mcg made this 10 years ago, and no one wanted to release this, so they just sat on it forever, and eventually Netflix said to themselves “Well, it can’t be any worse than Rebel moon.”
Truth is, for the most part, the action is on point. Laverne cox is an odd choice for the mastermind behind the evil plot to give everyone plastic surgery. I would think as the most prominent trans actress she would think that maybe a film that takes the idea of using surgery to help complete you to the most extreme probably should be represented by a non-trans actress. It’s almost like McG is trying to prove some weird political statement, through this awful script.
But, they also have hoverboards, and those are inherently cool. Every hoverboard sequence felt exciting, and easily the highlight of the movie. Plus, I didn’t hate the actors. Despite signing on to what must be the worst single idea a writer has had in the last fifty years, they show up fine, as does the audio description, which is really evident in the hoverboard action sequences.
But what is this world suggesting? People can’t be excited about having kids, because their kids will be ugly, and they’ll have to remove them from society until they turn 16, so there’s no parenting happening here. Just a bunch of kids being dropped off into an unnecessary limbo. And why 16? In the dystopian future, the kids become adults sooner? If the age range was older, Joey King would be a better casting choice.
I’ve seen worse films. Mcg makes these rather un memorable broad films set up to appeal to a wide range of people. He has no singular voice as a director. He’s like Brett Ratner, but without a bunch of creepy stories. Don’t read too much into this grade, because I fundamentally hate the concept and source material, but a lot of talented people showed up to try and make this work.
Final Grade: C-