The central premise of Uglies is that a few hundred years into the future, a series of disasters have driven humanity's survivors to embrace the idea that the only way to avoid conflict is to make everyone roughly as hot as the best-looking person on some sexy sex-based reality show. If this seems stupid to you, don't worry: there's an actual in-movie reason why humanity has (mostly) fallen for this, which largely boils down to "we only have to convince people this silly idea works until they're 16".
Tally Youngblood (Joey King) has bought into the system 100%. The only drawback as far as she can see is that her platonic bestie Peris (Chase Stokes) gets to have an extreme makeover and go live in the party city across the river a few months before her. But when he doesn't get in touch after his touch-up like he promised, she sneaks over to see how the other half live - and realises that maybe partying all night is the kind of thing only vapid airheads are totally into.
Fortunately her new bestie Shay (Brianne Tju) lets her know about the outdoor rebels led by David (Keith Powers), and while Tally isn't really up for the camping lifestyle she does enjoy learning about the exciting world of hoverboards. There is a lot of hoverboard action in this film, which is a big plus, especially as "hoverboard" pretty much equals "skateboard" here. Skateboarding is not a crime, unless you use it to smash the state.
After a few twists and turns Tally finds herself denied her makeover, but only because she has a secret mission: she's the only one who can track down David and infiltrate his organisation before they can unleash their "weapon" which will destroy party central and make everyone's eyeliner run. Will she be unable to resist the allure of his message, which is basically "touch grass"? Will party central turn out to have a dark secret? Will part of the big action climax be a direct steal from one of the most iconic moments in The Matrix?
Anyone who has ever watched a single movie in their lives can spot the problem here. In a Young Adult novel you can get away with having a lead who's meant to be tough to look at: in a YA movie, no. Everyone pre-makeover here is still very easy on the eyes, which you can either go along with or complain about - luckily enough, both responses work as far as the message of the movie is concerned.
Otherwise the great ideological divide here is between vapid high-tech partying and getting back to nature and doing something real, which is as good a conflict as any for a YA movie. The bad guys are bad but have just enough justification behind their actions to be plausible, the good guys are romanticised but are clearly on the right side of history, and the whole thing only has to work as a metaphor for a bunch of teenage life choices anyway.
What this is really about is Netflix (and by extension, Hollywood in general) wanting to see if audiences are ready for the return of the good old days when Harry Potter led to The Hunger Games and YA ruled both the page and the screen. The trouble with this kind of trial balloon is that it's for a genre that really needs some serious money spent on it to make it work: Uglies does pretty well with its special effects for what it is, but it's just not on the same scale as the YA classics of yore.
So is Uglies a real movie? Well, it's not a serious one; neither is it an epic tale of overwrought emotional angst like the best YA films. But King makes for a solid heroine who sells her character's journey even when the film is fast-forwarding through it, everyone else looks good even when they shouldn't, and it makes up for its lack of an emotional rollercoaster by having Tully hoverboard down a real one.
Plus, this pushes the ending just far enough past the (very effective) conclusion of the first novel to make sure we don't need a sequel that we know will never come. Tidying up loose ends: Hollywood should do more of it.
- Anthony Morris
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