WISE Score
Avg. Tomatometer
A dated dystopian flick that tries to tell you looks don't matter while looking like a generic CW pilot from 2012.
14%
14%View →Uglies arrived about a decade too late to the YA dystopian party. It’s a shallow adaptation of a genuinely great book series, suffering from a low budget and a script that treats its audience like they’ve never seen a 'rebellion against the system' story before.
If your kid is a die-hard fan of the books, they might enjoy seeing the world on screen, but prepare for some heavy disappointment. For everyone else, it’s a skip—there are much better ways to spend two hours on Netflix.
Best for 11-14 year olds who are just starting to explore dystopian fiction. Anyone older will likely find the production quality and script too 'mid' to enjoy.
It handles themes of friendship and self-worth, but the execution is emotionally flat and the dystopian setting is predictably grim without much heart.
While the source material is a creative powerhouse of YA fiction, the film adaptation feels like a generic, low-budget retread of every 'Hunger Games' clone from the 2010s.
Standard YA peril and some thematic focus on mandatory surgery (body horror lite), but nothing that would surprise a parent familiar with the genre.
The core message about the toxicity of beauty standards is important, but it's delivered in such a shallow, clunky way that it loses its impact.
The tragedy of Uglies is that the book it's based on actually has something to say. Scott Westerfeld wrote this story long before 'Instagram Face' was a thing, and his critique of beauty standards was ahead of its time. Unfortunately, the 2024 movie feels like it was found in a time capsule from 2014 and dusted off with zero updates to the visual style or dialogue.
The CGI is noticeably weak, which is a problem when the entire plot revolves around a city that is supposed to be breathtakingly beautiful. Instead, it looks like a generic screensaver. Joey King does what she can with the lead role, but the supporting cast and the flat directing make the whole thing feel like a 'made-for-TV' movie that accidentally ended up on a major streaming service.
If you want a dystopian fix, rewatch The Hunger Games or Mad Max: Fury Road. If you want to talk to your kids about beauty standards, read the Uglies book together. This movie is a rare miss that doesn't even manage to be 'so bad it's good'—it's just dull.
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