Movie Review: Uglies (2024)
Literally something that most of us have been waiting decades for, check out my full review of the Uglies movie below!
Movie Blurb
Tally Youngblood (Joey King) only wants one thing: to be Pretty. But she has to wait until her sixteenth birthday to get the surgery that will make her like everyone else. Being an Ugly makes her feel like she’s less than and she can’t wait for the surgery. Until she meets Shay (Brianne Tju). Shay quickly becomes her best friend and instead of counting down the days to her surgery, she just starts to… be herself. Shay knows of a place where you don’t have to be a Pretty to be accepted, and when Tally is forced to make a tough decision and follow Shay outside of their city, she learns that there is a lot about the world that she doesn’t know, and so many lies she’s been told her whole life.
Review | Heidi Dischler
So, really and truly, it’s been at the very minimum, a decade since I’ve read the Uglies series by Scott Westerfield. I remember adoring it (it’s one of my favorite book series from high school). I remember being absolutely devastated by the first book’s ending (do you really have a heart if you weren’t broken by the end?), but when it comes to specific plot points, I couldn’t tell you a thing. I had to look up an article for the book vs the movie differences and now I feel all refreshed after finishing the movie. In all honesty, I really loved the movie. Joey King was great as Tally and the amount that they were able to convey in an hour and forty-five minutes with such an extensive world was pretty impressive. There are a few things that bothered me, though, and I’ll go over them below.
With our characters, Shay was by far my favorite. Brianne Tju did an amazing job and I found myself just wanting to watch for her at times. Joey King was also great (even though I know people who won’t watch movies just because she’s in them—I seriously don’t understand these people). I wanted more from David (Keith Powers) and wished that the romance between him and Tally didn’t fall so flat in the movie. I remember being completely in love with their romance in the book, but didn’t feel much of anything in the movie. Those are honestly the three top characters to note, but I will say that my least favorite was probably Peris (Chase Stoked). He felt more like just a plot device to move Tally where she needed to go instead of just being an actual human. That’s just my opinion though.
With the plot, I felt like we got wayyy too much time in the beginning when Tally was still at the dorms and definitely not enough time at the Smoke. It felt like they thought they were running out of time so you got approximately two seconds in the place Tally is supposedly falling in love with. I didn’t have enough time watching the Smoke to fall in love with it, so it wasn’t convincing when Tally fell in love with it.
Overall, other than those things, I really did like the movie. It was a fun and entertaining story that had a pretty good foundation. I wish I could give you guys a book vs. movie, but like I said, it’s been at least a decade since I’ve read these novels. I’d give this movie a solid 4/5 stars. Now I just have to be on the lookout to see if we’re going to get the second book in the series adapted as well 👀.
Where to Watch: Netflix
