Even if Uglies was watchable, its tropes have been worn down to nubs and its themes wrung dry.

| Original Score: D- | Oct 25, 2024

It feels a bit infantile, never mind petty, to go looking for literary-theological heft in a project so clearly directed at the blushingly young, or to begrudge them an indulgence like Uglies.

| Sep 19, 2024

Should have stayed on the page.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 19, 2024

Everything about Uglies is average. Not terrible enough to be campy, not deep or provocative or visually impressive enough to merit further chapters in the story.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 18, 2024

Though it supposedly argues against human beings turned into synthetic quasi-droids, Uglies feels like just another throwaway product.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 13, 2024

King can’t really play a teen anymore, and the message of non-conformity feels stale, in the YA adaptation space and beyond. This trend, much like shifting beauty standards, is already on the way out.

| Original Score: C+ | Sep 13, 2024

The high stakes action-oriented scenes fall flat amidst the heavy-handed artifice, both technically and on paper.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Sep 13, 2024

Despite a committed young cast, director McG's unexciting franchise-starter doesn’t say anything all that meaningful about inner beauty and warped beauty standards.

| Sep 13, 2024

To say that it’s a fourth-generation knock-off of myriad similar YA sagas that have come before it would be an understatement.

| Sep 13, 2024

One could easily imagine Kris Jenner as an adviser to Laverne Cox’s imperious Dr. Cable, the leader of the lovelies.

| Sep 13, 2024

It’s all about as familiar-feeling as it sounds, but it goes down easily thanks to McG’s skillful, fast-paced direction, the imaginatively lavish CGI-enhanced visuals, and King’s impressive performance.

| Sep 13, 2024

Something to fill a quota, not to be thought about or enjoyed, so that Netflix can tell their subscribers technically they have a new exclusive movie this week, quality be damned. And in this case quality was indeed damned.

| Sep 12, 2024