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movie review - Uglies

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

This is a sci-f-adjacent movie about a young woman growing up in a world in which all adults undergo massive plastic surgery to achieve their ideal form. It's sort of Logan's Run affair, where something is clearly off from the outset. Soon, our girl is involved with the outsiders who are trying to overthrow the existing order.

It's a mostly unambitious thing that seems to have less to say about some of the obvious subjects that the situation might present: our obsession with appearance, for instance; or the madness of butchering our faces to feed our vanity. It quickly descends into a CGI-heavy war, but I found myself not caring about the outcomes because I didn't care about the heroine or anybody else. There were no memorable scenes, and everything felt pretty lifeless. I don't know what went wrong but it was so pervasive an impression I wondered if there were problems on the set.

Not recommended.