It reminds me of the "Born This Way" Glee episode where some of the actors actually had their biggest insecurities on their shirts (like "nose" for Rachel), while other actors had new characteristics made up just for the episode (Mercedes having a weave, Tina wearing blue contacts suddenly) because the writers were afraid to be accused of fatphobia or racism or something.
its so crazy how they really thought they could get away with the usual casting-25-yr-olds-as-teenagers bullshit when this movie is literally centered around teenagers being made to feel ugly for NOT looking like 25 yr olds. The main girl in the movie is like what are you saying to the mirror girl you already left puberty!!!
this is real asf, honestly. i understand why they casted adults since the characters can’t visibily age through out the series, but i bet there were so many teen actors/young adults who could pass off as teenagers that could’ve executed these roles perfectly. i’m so tired of casting agents prioritizing credibility and popularity over talent/potential.
@@mialluringmaybe hire someone who’s 18-19 so they still look young but they’re not pushing 30 and they’re trying to make us think they’re 15-16. It’s not believable.
No literally, I remember Tally coming to the realization that maybe a part of being “ugly” was just being at an awkward stage of life. They were literally 12-16, I don’t know about you but that’s absolutely when I felt the worst about my face and body too
Fr why couldn’t they get an 18 year old who was at least average or unconventionally attractive so that difference between uglies and pretties wasn’t just some 2016 instagram filte😭
I also tried to read it and wasn’t really feeling it, but I’m actually appalled at how horrible this movie came out 🥲 this definitely would’ve been executed better with BM
it makes it so sad that this film was a flop. You're completely right about how the film should've come out ten years ago. People wanted this movie 20 years ago when the book came out. With Harry Potter and Twilight getting movies, people thought Uglies would get it's shine. Then Divergent and Hunger Games got their roses, and no Uglies came through. It's waaaaay too late for this adaptation.
also the fact that they're following like jarring modern beauty standards for the Pretties really upsets me. The original Uglies, the Pretties and their surgeries made them hyper non-human. Like Tally goes on to get pink hair and glowing eyes. There are people who get animal features. Most of the people enhance themselves to look beyond human. And the more surgeries you get, the more brainwashed you get into complacency to the society you live in.
Scott Westerfield actually said that he got multiple offers to turn this series into a movie, but he always refused because they wanted to change way too many things. I guess this was close enough for him. Also, Joey King was really passionate about this.
It already existed 60 years ago. It's called "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" from the original Twilight Zone series. (It's not the pig face episode Trin mentions.)
I just want to say that the point isn’t that Joey king is supposed to be ugly. Everyone before the surgery, no matter what they look like, is an ugly. They didn’t make the surgery drastic enough in the movie, everyone is supposed to look basically the same after the surgery.
I mean, yeah, but the uglies are supposed to be middle schoolers with acne, moles, non-symetrical faces, fluctuating weight, crooked teeth ect... They are supposed to look like those greasy "dirtbag" photos from before teenagers had social media. I think the only way to have done this series justice would have been to cast different actors for the ugly and pretty versions of each character, like what was done for the time skip in house of the dragon.
@@Juliabulia4404 it would be pretty fucked up to be an actor casted for a role and only play the ugly version and then have another actor play the prettier version of you. Hence why most movies that involve some kind of glowup will opt to cast hot actors and then spend the half of the movie trying to convince the audience that they are ugly
@@Juliabulia4404they should have just animated the movie, would have been a better way to make the "pretties" look uncanny instead of just slapping some makeup on them and calling it a day imo
Yeah, i think it would have been more impactful if all the pretties were basically clones but with varying hair and eye colors. Like how people who get a lot of plastic surgery all kinda look the same.
In the books, they can't decide to keep something or what they wanna change when they'll have the surgery :/ They can change things like eye color and hair color later on but they can't even choose what they will have right after the surgery. Also, you are right: they ARE supposed to be almost unrecognizable after the surgery, cause their beauty standards are so strict that everyone ends up looking almost the same. But they went for something different for the movie...
I think they got confused because if I’m not mistaken in the books they did have body modifications? Also the book gave the movie people a way out there are natural pretties even if they’re rare which means they didn’t have to put a filter on everything.
@@1hcc994 I never read the books actually, so being naturally pretty I am perking up right now. You mean I can have a luxurious, uber-rich life without even having to do anything at all?! I hate my deadbeat of a father, but I'd be thanking the stars every day for having the blessing of naturally good looking parents who gave me their gifts if I were in that world (my father in his youth was a 'hot rat boyfriend' kind of man) and my mom and her sister look a lot like the actress Kristen Dalton so I've won the genetic lottery, that's for sure.
That makes more sense cus like, in this movie, in theory, someone could customise themselves to look just like Joey King does, so why is she ugly and how can they tell the difference? I feel like that's a big plot hole to overlook when that's the whole....like.....point
They also do brain surgery to completely change their personalities and how they think. Do they even mention that in the movie? Other than her friend suddenly being stuck up. It wasn’t just a visual transformation. It was basically like they got a lobotomy. It was to keep them docile and not violent.
IIRC in the books they had a limited set of template looks to choose from, they were not customizable to the extent the movie implies. So "ugly" was just anyone who wasn't a template.
Can we talk about how her nickname was “Squint” because she supposedly had too squinty of eyes (miss girl’s eyes were huge idk what kind of crack everyone was on) and a transformation was supposed to make her eyes bigger but after the pretty transformation her eyes got smaller and more squinty?😂
that could honestly even work if there was more time given to it. only the "right" kind of squint is allowed, only the "right" kind of larger nose is allowed, its all arbitrary and designed to make you insecure no matter what. there could be a scene where she is still insecure about her eyes and they state that she has the Good Squint but she continues feel bad about it! too bad the point is lost with no screentime and her naturally large eyes lol
@@coatimundi69 ohhhh you’re right that would work! The movie is just extremely rushed so it feels like literally nothing in the movie was elaborated on/given enough detail
To be fair, in the books everyone who isn't perfect is "ugly" people who were considered naturally beautiful were extremely rare. But yeah you know it's bad when he looks hotter than the people who actually took the surgery
On the comment of why David is hot: in the book, the main character comments on a poster of a model that was left over from before the apocalypse and remarks on how interesting it is that uglies used to feel bold and confident enough to pose in conmercials. The implication being that even what we consider to be conventionally attractive becomes ugly in the future.
seeing your dog doing little sleepy twitches was so cute! they messed up the pretties so much because in the book they are supposed to be uncanny and borderline monstrous. it was so drastically different that they looked at magazines with models from our time and talked about how ugly they were with shock. they were supposed to look not human and its sad that it wasnt really portrayed like that
It would have made an awesome anime, or they could have at least attempted to problem solve the ”how to make every actor look almost the same after the surgery” with some full on animation but instead we got this… Almost impressive how bad the choices they made are…
Someone said they should’ve made them look less human. Like sharper more alien looking features. I honestly agree, if we look at filters online that are meant to make us “prettier” the eyes get big and the noses get smaller. Like she should’ve looked completely different honestly.
Everybody commenting about actors who aren't ugly being cast as ugly, but it didn't matter how good looking any uglies were because all unmodified people were considered ugly. The movie makes the transformed people look too normal, compared to the book, for the audience to buy it, but it would have taken lot of iffy cgi to pull it off how they looked in the book. The transformed were all altered to look similar, they don't get to pick much beyond eye and hair color. It's like they shaped everyone's face to fit the golden ration, with zero pores, veneers, filler lips, and inhumanly large eyes, think like the Alita: Battle Angel movie. Their bodies are slimmed down and shaped to fit a template as well. Girls all have the same body shape, and guys all have the same body shape. It was a very specific, very unnatural, homogenized look.
Makes me wish it was animated even more 😭 especially if they actually did good worldbuilding and you could see the differences in generations when they decided new standards for the surgery. Then it would show that "beauty is subjective" within their society anyways and could focus more on the mind controling aspect, and that that bodily anatomy and self respect is more important. Makes me wanna finally go watch Alita though lol
This is the part no one is getting. They’re like “oh but they’re not even ugly and they don’t look different after!” Ehhh… yeah… cause just like in the world today the people who get surgery aren’t actually ugly… they just aren’t the current standards. Like nobody can tell me Kylie Jenner was ugly… she just didn’t look like Kim which was the beauty standard that were still stuck with today. The standards keep getting more and more unnatural as we go along and I’m afraid we’re not that far from what this book was warning about. Same With how Idiocracy is starting to look like just the regular world we live in people are giving into the standards so much that we’re gonna end up in a world we’re people just get surgery at 15/16 to avoid being “ugly”. People don’t realize that beauty standards are also a way of control.
@@SocialExperiment232 I guess you could argue that them being played by conventionally attractive actors was okay for the lore but them looking the same after surgery/worse is not really defendable because it makes the audience confused and unable to understand the message. They probably should’ve acknowledged in the movie that Joey kind IS beautiful, but doesn’t fit the mould
@@TenderNoodle I agree they should have made the surgeries more extreme. In the book people practically don’t look human anymore. That was the point. That looking and being human was “out of style” so people that were normal or even pretty were treated as unattractive. But the criticism that the actors should have been like deformed doesn’t make any sense. Tally is an unreliable narrator. She sees herself as super ugly even tho she isn’t. I’m sure a lot of us would describe ourselves using way too extreme words for our own appearance. But in this world specifically they were all brainwashed into thinking that anything close to human was hideous cause that was the point they wanted to give them these surgeries to control them and I believe that’s exactly what the plastic surgery industry is doing today.
i've seen a lot of people say it wouldve been a lot better if the book was adapted into an animation (make it something like arcane) rather than a live action film so that the character designs for the "smokies" "pretties" and "specials" could be more believable
I mean there’s tons of people in today’s day and age that are treated like they’re ugly and they absolutely are not. Like girls who don’t necessarily have curvy bodies treated like they’re sub par even tho they’re stunning. People don’t realize that beauty standards are a social construct that is pushed by the media literally to sell products so they are always stupid.
they should have made the pretties look like the plastic surgery we see commonly today on social media. Lip filler, eyebrow lift, cheek filler, botox, etc
Reminds me of when they cast Mae Whitman in DUFF. Like Hollywood canNOT bring themself to cast an actual “ugly” person in roles for ugly characters. They’ll just cast short brunettes
@@Katranga In DUFF was she really meant to be ugly or was she meant to be the ugliest friend in the friend group therefore make her the DUFF be default?
Why didn’t they make Tally, Shay, and Nose a trio of lifelong friends? It would have been so much more impactful on Tally to have one friend become “pretty” and one a “rebel” and then she has to decide which friend to follow. She JUST met Shay, why would she care that she wants to leave when her best friend that she’s known since childhood is in prettytown?
They should have had like young teens play the “uglies” and then hired mature looking older actors to play the “pretties” the change would have been more impactful
omg shay's reveal i LAUGHED so much 😭😭😭 this movie is so unserious wtfff and yes, youre right about people choosing pretty lmaooo, the concept feels outdated
Fully agree that they could not make this story work now without more edits. We're basically living in this world now and they're not telling us anything we don't know. I loved the books when I was younger but that was 20 years ago lolol
The bad thing about genetics is how it works lol You can have 2 pretty people have ugly offspring, and you can have literally my middle school friend, who had both parents being ugly and they had FOUR CHILDREN including one set of twins and they were ALL GORGEOUS. It took me my ENTIRE adolescence to be considered kinda cute, only NOW that I'm almost 30 that I'm getting hotter and MY MOM HAS BEEN PRETTY HER ENTIRE LIFE. Genetics are so unfair istg
Funny how people kept referencing "Divergent" in the movie review of "Uglies" when one of the script writers of "Uglies", Vanessa Taylor, literally co-wrote the first "Divergent" movie 😂😂
This movie wouldve been 100x better if they had leaned into how screwed up their perception of "beauty" was and just made them look crazy to point out how absurd beauty standards are
Yeah, they're not trying to. They're only "ugly" in the world of the story, to the people who are all surgically altered. None of them are actually ugly, and it's amazing people aren't understanding this. They're not actually ugly, it's just how the world treats them. That's the point. The real reason for the surgery is to effectively make everyone placid and easy to control. The ugly part is just the superficial reason given.
@@Kronzo888 i dont blame movie watchers for not getting it, the movie did a god awful job of workdbuilding and pacing to begin with. The books actually show that later with magizines in the smoke and later books, but the movie by itself kinda does send that message, especially since pretties in the movie are just smokey eye filters whereas in the books they were supposed to look wayy different and almost unhuman. (Tho it is rlly frustrating trying to fill the gaps the movie left when talking/explaining parts of it to other ppl so I feel u there)
@@Kronzo888this! I don’t get how people don’t get that all beauty standards are stupidly since the people being told they’re ugly are never ugly! You can’t tell me that because a woman has a rectangular body shape (which is out of style right now) is actually ugly. You can’t tell me a woman is “ugly” just because she’s overweight. It’s just social constructs that were so brainwashed by that we can’t see the reality. Same like with most of us grew up thinking we were so ugly now I look back at young pictures of me and I was so cute. I was so brainwashed by social norms that I thought that because I didn’t have the body that was popular at the time I must be hideous. That’s the exact message of the books. That beauty standards are dumb and people don’t need all these surgeries to be loved.
@@SocialExperiment232 Yeah, exactly, but most people see the title, see the actors, and that's the entire extent of the meaning to them. I'm not even a fan of the film, and I think it has other issues, but this critique is so dumb because it's literally like, "Yeah, of course Joey King isn't ugly, that's the point." If you're gonna criticise something, criticise the right things.
@@Kronzo888 We understand it, but it’s just a dumb explanation. It doesn’t matter how pretty you are it’s about whether or not you had the surgery, but that’s just stupid if you use logic, pretty people already exist and the “pretty’s” barely look any different from normal people. We have celebrities who look worse than that! So yes, the criticism is valid. Had this movie made the “pretty’s” so modified they barely looked human anymore, then this would be a different story.
Making fun of people based on their looks is never okay like what the fuck of mindset do you guys haveif you want to criticize them on their action, then criticize only their bad actions
Ahhh so glad to see you review this!! I read these books in high school and I think this is a really weird/interesting time to make a movie about them because from what I remember it just predicted so much of social media and our current culture. But then they made it a Netflix movie and cast the kissing booth actress as the lead….. did not have high hopes
theres no way theyre making the other movies lol one of the main plotlines for the later books is shay creating a group of people who self harm to "unbrainwash" themselves
Yeah to be honest i read the first book when i was like 14 but couldn't get through the rest of them even then, like the premise is interesting but that's about it, it got pretty boring afterwards
That part always made me feel gross when I read it as a teen (same with when Tally becomes special, and is genentically coded to be repulsed by disabled people 💀) I feel like they couldve made them adrenaline junkies instead of cutting, but im a lil sad ill never see me fav part of pretties when Tally finds the natural uglies that SC are monitering on reserves. I wish it was animated so badly to actually show all the cool tech and surgery mods from the books 🥲
Y'all need to read Tyra Banks book Modelland, it came out in 2011 and is so similar to this. No, I'm not joking. Yes, Tyra Banks wrote a YA novel. It's over 500 pages and is a WILD ride, literally gave me nightmares. Highly recommend 😂
the "pretties" (idk what they's actually called) look sooo yassified, like it's giving 12 year old me discovering facetune type apps and playing around with them.
If I could change my blue eyes, I would make them brown because I'm sick of being blinded every time I step outside without sunglasses, regardless of the season.
the crazy thing is that in the books being pretty is actually like horrifying like the modifications people get are actually kinda crazy not just like *makeup* lol
I have watched three reactions to this movie and I still have no idea what the actual plot is or why people are being turned pretty in the first place lol
It’s not just plastic surgery it’s also brain surgery similar to a lobotomy that changes who they are and how they are. The government does it to keep them in line. Not sure if they mention in the movie, I’ve only read the books.
Watched it yesterday, the “plot” is that when people becoming pretty something in their brain is happening to make them stupid. That the Dr. can rule them easily. (I’m not joking this movie is nuts🥹)
@@meelliinna Oh i guess that makes sense. I just feel like there should be more of a motivation as of why these people are being turned pretty other than just because someone wants to "rule" them lol but it's whatever
Yes I read the books years ago but essentially the population is sorted according to demographics, they get separated from a young age and are put in a different place where they get looked after by teachers and carers.
@mgtssacjo yes i don't recall a lot tbh the books were not that interesting to me but you can tell that people really don't have a sense of family, like there's not a mention of a parent ever
Where Tally ends up at the end is “New Pretty Town” where you stay from 16-25. After that you get another surgery to become “middle pretty” and have kids/job. Kids up to age 11 are “Littlies” and go to the Ugly dorms at 12
I read the books and didn’t watch the show because I knew they weren’t able to properly pull off the plot without extreme CGI. I could be remembering this incorrectly but the downside to becoming a pretty is that they all look the same, almost cookie cutter-esque, with only distinct features in colours of their eyes or hair. But they go through surgery to meet the “standard” of beauty with their facial features, weight, and height. It’s like the golden face ratio is being applied to all of them. The other downside is that they’re all brainwashed during the surgery to be happy with being the standard of pretty and all most pretties want to do is socialize and party. Also the hoverboard thing was supposed to be a “secret” way of moving around town because the whole area had like old magnetic tracks to travel on in the past. They weren’t allowed to use them anymore because that type of travel was abandoned when they made the pretty utopia and seen as unsightly.
I read this book series as a teenager, its actually really good especially for YA. And it quite accurately predicts a lot of technology we ended up getting 😅 but yeah this movie wasn't quite it for me. we can talk sbout casting and weird more modern talk about identity etc (this book was written in the 2000s). My main issue was that it is very rushed. I didnt have time to get attached to anyone at all. the plot of the books is actually quite slow, they take a lot of time helping you believe in these bonds between people, the setting and context. They even give a really specific reasoning for why the hover boards work and how they only work in certain areas etc. Shay was definitely more interesting in the book, obvs the main character is meant to just be a self insert. Another issue i do have with the story is that the "pretty" procedure is something thats hard to put to screen, especially in modern times where we see filters etc every day. Its hard to convince us. When youre reading it on a page, you can inagine for yourself what that might look like - everyone could look weird af for all we know, but it would be normal to them. I mean the procedure literally involves peeling your skin off and replacing it, replacing just about every part of your body, its not so simple as they seem to show in the movie. Its supposed to be a bit horrifying lol
Isn't the whole point is that they're not actually ugly. Hence the "pretty" procedure not really changing them that much. The basis of becoming "pretty" is getting the procedure so they can be mind controlled.
13:33 the 'choice between being pretty & being free' mini rant is better than this entire movie AT ITS OWN THEME. Ugh, I only vaguely remember the plot of these books but so many of the criticisms you make for the movie are explicitly covered as the point of the plot; Netflix didn't just drop the ball they threw it on the ground and it bounced back up in their face.
Truly one of the worst books I’ve ever read. Vanilla Pudding Girl isn’t sure she wants to become “Pretty”, hoverboards around endlessly, every cute boy she meets falls hopelessly in love with her, more hoverboarding ensues, more boys fall in love with her for no reason, hoverboarding, hoverboarding, down comes The System for some reason. Westerfeld is such a hack.
Truly though, even I was 14 i only read the first one but couldn't get through the rest, the premise is interesting but it lacks substance. Like this could've all been 1 single black mirror episode if even that
26:00 she had doe eyes the whole movie and they called her “squint” but after she gets her surgery her eyes are actually smaller???? They’re trolling, right?? 😂
@@real_cherita Oh ok! Didn’t know that! Thx for telling me! Some of themes were very similar as the other books but I was largely referring to the movies based on those books specifically. Some of the shots in this reminded me of shots from all of the other movies I mentioned. It seems like they tried to film this in the same way as those which was kinda weird to me lol.
@@real_cherita I think the only recent dystopian movie that had some success was the new Hunger Games movie about President Snow, but that doesn't really count because it's a part of an already established movie franchise.
I love that the plot of this movie is literally just putting people in the bold glamour filter and making them blonde.
With creepy bright eyes
@@jhbbhj876 they truly look like that miley cyrus meme, now that i'm thinking about it 👀
@@vleriii Or the elephant from that one Barbie movie
@@jupiter771 omg miss tikka from barbie as the island princess, just ONE of my sleep paralysis demons
I'm not gonna lie, when I read the book, that's pretty much how I thought they made people look "pretty".
you having to clarify that ugly people do in fact deserve rights is killing me 😭
“The only time she didn’t have a fucked up wig was when she was bald” 😭😭😭😭
no cause it's trueeeeee, whoever's doing the line budgets needs to stop forcing hair and makeup to use synthetic 😭
“ugly people deserve rights too” - trin
Love when Trin stands up for me ☺️
us ugly one i cried lol
@@estela1462 “unless they’re horrible people” - also Trin
😂😂
ULM . ugly lives matter tm
"He can't hear you his nose is gone" HELP 😭
Right
“Jenna can’t hear us she’s blind” -Hanna from Pretty Little Liars😂
@@loraelizabeth7580 that's what I was thinking haha
I fucking died at joey’s yassification, they just put makeup on her and applied Korean skincare and called it a day 😭
LMAOOOOO
Trin being like "I wouldn't do eugenics but I'm surprised they didn't resort to eugenics" omfg I'm dead
no that’s EXACTLY WHAT I WAS THINKING😭😭
Them trying to make us believe she has squinty eyes is so unserious like ….
Like literally some of the biggest eyes i’ve seen
It reminds me of the "Born This Way" Glee episode where some of the actors actually had their biggest insecurities on their shirts (like "nose" for Rachel), while other actors had new characteristics made up just for the episode (Mercedes having a weave, Tina wearing blue contacts suddenly) because the writers were afraid to be accused of fatphobia or racism or something.
LMFOAOAOOA FR LIKE
LITERALLY i bursted out laughing when she was called squinty like she has the biggest doll eyes to ever exist
Hahaha I’m so glad I’m not the only one who noticed this because yeah they’re defintely not squinty 😂
its so crazy how they really thought they could get away with the usual casting-25-yr-olds-as-teenagers bullshit when this movie is literally centered around teenagers being made to feel ugly for NOT looking like 25 yr olds. The main girl in the movie is like what are you saying to the mirror girl you already left puberty!!!
this is real asf, honestly. i understand why they casted adults since the characters can’t visibily age through out the series, but i bet there were so many teen actors/young adults who could pass off as teenagers that could’ve executed these roles perfectly. i’m so tired of casting agents prioritizing credibility and popularity over talent/potential.
@@mialluringmaybe hire someone who’s 18-19 so they still look young but they’re not pushing 30 and they’re trying to make us think they’re 15-16. It’s not believable.
No literally, I remember Tally coming to the realization that maybe a part of being “ugly” was just being at an awkward stage of life. They were literally 12-16, I don’t know about you but that’s absolutely when I felt the worst about my face and body too
Well this movie was produced a while ago it just got released. Joey was 21 at the time of the movies making
Fr why couldn’t they get an 18 year old who was at least average or unconventionally attractive so that difference between uglies and pretties wasn’t just some 2016 instagram filte😭
As someone who tried to read this series when i was a teen, the whole plot could be put into 1 black mirror episode and call it a day
And the crazy thing is, the black mirror episode would’ve been 1000x better than what we actually got!!! They really should’ve just did that instead
@s.ugahoneyicetea i will never trust a straight man writer to make an actually interesting commentary on beauty and plastic surgery or makeup
Uglies is actually a total knockoff of a twilight zone episode from decades ago. So yes, one short episode is all it takes 😂
I thought the same thing!!
I also tried to read it and wasn’t really feeling it, but I’m actually appalled at how horrible this movie came out 🥲 this definitely would’ve been executed better with BM
Keith powers being ugly was the most unreal thing about this whole movie
💀💀💀 weakness: too handsome
nah fr that man is FINEE😭
Literally no one in this movie is ugly. Not a one.
@@haileystvd it pisses me off that nobody was remotely undesirable like KEITH REALLY NETFLIX
@@KatyTerBergjoey
it makes it so sad that this film was a flop. You're completely right about how the film should've come out ten years ago. People wanted this movie 20 years ago when the book came out. With Harry Potter and Twilight getting movies, people thought Uglies would get it's shine. Then Divergent and Hunger Games got their roses, and no Uglies came through. It's waaaaay too late for this adaptation.
also the fact that they're following like jarring modern beauty standards for the Pretties really upsets me. The original Uglies, the Pretties and their surgeries made them hyper non-human. Like Tally goes on to get pink hair and glowing eyes. There are people who get animal features. Most of the people enhance themselves to look beyond human. And the more surgeries you get, the more brainwashed you get into complacency to the society you live in.
Scott Westerfield actually said that he got multiple offers to turn this series into a movie, but he always refused because they wanted to change way too many things. I guess this was close enough for him. Also, Joey King was really passionate about this.
@@ribonichigoI think that's a big reason why it's become a laughingstock
It’s #1 on Netflix…
It already existed 60 years ago. It's called "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" from the original Twilight Zone series. (It's not the pig face episode Trin mentions.)
I just want to say that the point isn’t that Joey king is supposed to be ugly. Everyone before the surgery, no matter what they look like, is an ugly. They didn’t make the surgery drastic enough in the movie, everyone is supposed to look basically the same after the surgery.
I mean, yeah, but the uglies are supposed to be middle schoolers with acne, moles, non-symetrical faces, fluctuating weight, crooked teeth ect... They are supposed to look like those greasy "dirtbag" photos from before teenagers had social media. I think the only way to have done this series justice would have been to cast different actors for the ugly and pretty versions of each character, like what was done for the time skip in house of the dragon.
@@Juliabulia4404 it would be pretty fucked up to be an actor casted for a role and only play the ugly version and then have another actor play the prettier version of you. Hence why most movies that involve some kind of glowup will opt to cast hot actors and then spend the half of the movie trying to convince the audience that they are ugly
adding "supposed to" onto things like you're a secret producer of the film vibes doesn't excuse how ridiculous it was
@@Juliabulia4404they should have just animated the movie, would have been a better way to make the "pretties" look uncanny instead of just slapping some makeup on them and calling it a day imo
Yeah, i think it would have been more impactful if all the pretties were basically clones but with varying hair and eye colors. Like how people who get a lot of plastic surgery all kinda look the same.
In the books, they can't decide to keep something or what they wanna change when they'll have the surgery :/ They can change things like eye color and hair color later on but they can't even choose what they will have right after the surgery.
Also, you are right: they ARE supposed to be almost unrecognizable after the surgery, cause their beauty standards are so strict that everyone ends up looking almost the same. But they went for something different for the movie...
I think they got confused because if I’m not mistaken in the books they did have body modifications? Also the book gave the movie people a way out there are natural pretties even if they’re rare which means they didn’t have to put a filter on everything.
@@1hcc994 I never read the books actually, so being naturally pretty I am perking up right now. You mean I can have a luxurious, uber-rich life without even having to do anything at all?! I hate my deadbeat of a father, but I'd be thanking the stars every day for having the blessing of naturally good looking parents who gave me their gifts if I were in that world (my father in his youth was a 'hot rat boyfriend' kind of man) and my mom and her sister look a lot like the actress Kristen Dalton so I've won the genetic lottery, that's for sure.
That makes more sense cus like, in this movie, in theory, someone could customise themselves to look just like Joey King does, so why is she ugly and how can they tell the difference? I feel like that's a big plot hole to overlook when that's the whole....like.....point
They also do brain surgery to completely change their personalities and how they think. Do they even mention that in the movie? Other than her friend suddenly being stuck up. It wasn’t just a visual transformation. It was basically like they got a lobotomy. It was to keep them docile and not violent.
@@winter333 Yes they do mention it, did you watch the movie?...
Like Trixie Mattel once said "Hot people doesn’t mean they’re good in bed, ugly people doesn’t mean they deserve to live"
No joke, I just said that outloud to myself before the video started lmaoooo
I thought of this too 😅
An actress who’s main features is big doe eyes being cast as the character called “squint” is actually insane
the way the movie feels like an ai generated script of other dystopian movies/books when uglies was released years before 😭
you put it in words
IIRC in the books they had a limited set of template looks to choose from, they were not customizable to the extent the movie implies. So "ugly" was just anyone who wasn't a template.
That makes more sense
Can we talk about how her nickname was “Squint” because she supposedly had too squinty of eyes (miss girl’s eyes were huge idk what kind of crack everyone was on) and a transformation was supposed to make her eyes bigger but after the pretty transformation her eyes got smaller and more squinty?😂
that could honestly even work if there was more time given to it. only the "right" kind of squint is allowed, only the "right" kind of larger nose is allowed, its all arbitrary and designed to make you insecure no matter what. there could be a scene where she is still insecure about her eyes and they state that she has the Good Squint but she continues feel bad about it!
too bad the point is lost with no screentime and her naturally large eyes lol
@@coatimundi69 ohhhh you’re right that would work! The movie is just extremely rushed so it feels like literally nothing in the movie was elaborated on/given enough detail
rich pretty hollywood acotors playing "uglies" is either highly insensitive and offensive or peak comedy
To be fair, in the books everyone who isn't perfect is "ugly" people who were considered naturally beautiful were extremely rare. But yeah you know it's bad when he looks hotter than the people who actually took the surgery
Which is exactly why I knew this movie was never gonna get the point
Trin reinventing eugenics as a solution to the plot is killing meeeee😭
These casual eugenics movies y'know 😂
It’s about time another villain wins in an movie
On the comment of why David is hot: in the book, the main character comments on a poster of a model that was left over from before the apocalypse and remarks on how interesting it is that uglies used to feel bold and confident enough to pose in conmercials. The implication being that even what we consider to be conventionally attractive becomes ugly in the future.
seeing your dog doing little sleepy twitches was so cute! they messed up the pretties so much because in the book they are supposed to be uncanny and borderline monstrous. it was so drastically different that they looked at magazines with models from our time and talked about how ugly they were with shock. they were supposed to look not human and its sad that it wasnt really portrayed like that
It would have made an awesome anime, or they could have at least attempted to problem solve the ”how to make every actor look almost the same after the surgery” with some full on animation but instead we got this… Almost impressive how bad the choices they made are…
Someone said they should’ve made them look less human. Like sharper more alien looking features. I honestly agree, if we look at filters online that are meant to make us “prettier” the eyes get big and the noses get smaller. Like she should’ve looked completely different honestly.
Like the book!
Right and the Specials were supposed to be like *terrifying* but they were just extra not that different looking form a standard Pretty
This movie is "what if the mods of r/TrueRateMe were the government?"
Omg this is spot on
Pissing myself at this hahahaha so true
that noise at the beginning... so real
they turned tally into m3gan 😂
Omg trueeee
Everybody commenting about actors who aren't ugly being cast as ugly, but it didn't matter how good looking any uglies were because all unmodified people were considered ugly. The movie makes the transformed people look too normal, compared to the book, for the audience to buy it, but it would have taken lot of iffy cgi to pull it off how they looked in the book. The transformed were all altered to look similar, they don't get to pick much beyond eye and hair color. It's like they shaped everyone's face to fit the golden ration, with zero pores, veneers, filler lips, and inhumanly large eyes, think like the Alita: Battle Angel movie. Their bodies are slimmed down and shaped to fit a template as well. Girls all have the same body shape, and guys all have the same body shape. It was a very specific, very unnatural, homogenized look.
Makes me wish it was animated even more 😭 especially if they actually did good worldbuilding and you could see the differences in generations when they decided new standards for the surgery.
Then it would show that "beauty is subjective" within their society anyways and could focus more on the mind controling aspect, and that that bodily anatomy and self respect is more important.
Makes me wanna finally go watch Alita though lol
This is the part no one is getting. They’re like “oh but they’re not even ugly and they don’t look different after!” Ehhh… yeah… cause just like in the world today the people who get surgery aren’t actually ugly… they just aren’t the current standards. Like nobody can tell me Kylie Jenner was ugly… she just didn’t look like Kim which was the beauty standard that were still stuck with today. The standards keep getting more and more unnatural as we go along and I’m afraid we’re not that far from what this book was warning about. Same
With how Idiocracy is starting to look like just the regular world we live in people are giving into the standards so much that we’re gonna end up in a world we’re people just get surgery at 15/16 to avoid being “ugly”. People don’t realize that beauty standards are also a way of control.
@@SocialExperiment232 I guess you could argue that them being played by conventionally attractive actors was okay for the lore but them looking the same after surgery/worse is not really defendable because it makes the audience confused and unable to understand the message. They probably should’ve acknowledged in the movie that Joey kind IS beautiful, but doesn’t fit the mould
@@TenderNoodle I agree they should have made the surgeries more extreme. In the book people practically don’t look human anymore. That was the point. That looking and being human was “out of style” so people that were normal or even pretty were treated as unattractive. But the criticism that the actors should have been like deformed doesn’t make any sense. Tally is an unreliable narrator. She sees herself as super ugly even tho she isn’t. I’m sure a lot of us would describe ourselves using way too extreme words for our own appearance. But in this world specifically they were all brainwashed into thinking that anything close to human was hideous cause that was the point they wanted to give them these surgeries to control them and I believe that’s exactly what the plastic surgery industry is doing today.
@@TenderNoodleThe message is extremely easy to understand. At no point was this movie confusing at all.
“The warbler with eyeliner” had to be the most brutal and accurate read I’ve ever heard in my entire life.
Trin really said “I’m not ugly but if I was, I would want equal rights”, also know as the Macklemore defense
i’m calling being an ally pulling a macklemore from now on
not "if she's called Squint, what the fuck am I called" girl that took me out 💀
Girl day 10 of the period😭 my heart goes out to you
i've seen a lot of people say it wouldve been a lot better if the book was adapted into an animation (make it something like arcane) rather than a live action film so that the character designs for the "smokies" "pretties" and "specials" could be more believable
i'm supposed to believe KEITH POWERS is ugly??? pls my imagination is not that rich
I think It's supposed to be that he doesn't fit the beauty standards of that society just because he doesn't have the necessary surgeries
I mean there’s tons of people in today’s day and age that are treated like they’re ugly and they absolutely are not. Like girls who don’t necessarily have curvy bodies treated like they’re sub par even tho they’re stunning. People don’t realize that beauty standards are a social construct that is pushed by the media literally to sell products so they are always stupid.
Joey King get a good wig challenge (impossible)
it’s so distracting in all of her movies
they should have made the pretties look like the plastic surgery we see commonly today on social media. Lip filler, eyebrow lift, cheek filler, botox, etc
i saw someone say it and I’m saying it too, I’m tired of being forced to think that Joey King is ugly, please stop it, get some help, fire her agent
Reminds me of when they cast Mae Whitman in DUFF. Like Hollywood canNOT bring themself to cast an actual “ugly” person in roles for ugly characters. They’ll just cast short brunettes
She’s just painfully average
@@real_cheritaas she should be, don’t know why celebs strive for “perfect” when everyone is average!
@@jglarpo very true, average people make movies feel more real anyway😅
@@Katranga In DUFF was she really meant to be ugly or was she meant to be the ugliest friend in the friend group therefore make her the DUFF be default?
the leader of the uglies literally being keith powers... yall clearly missed 2017 "cute black boy" pinterest era omg
like to this DAY he’s still being used as a faceclaim for wattpad books, so ugly where??
girl u are GLOWINGG!! ur hair looks so gorgeous and ur SKIN?!?! what a stunner xx
Why didn’t they make Tally, Shay, and Nose a trio of lifelong friends? It would have been so much more impactful on Tally to have one friend become “pretty” and one a “rebel” and then she has to decide which friend to follow. She JUST met Shay, why would she care that she wants to leave when her best friend that she’s known since childhood is in prettytown?
the second movie: take off the makeup queen, you're beautiful as you are......
The Uglies book is so much better than whatever this movie was 😭😭
Literally
They should have had like young teens play the “uglies” and then hired mature looking older actors to play the “pretties” the change would have been more impactful
Can someone release Joey King from her Manager.. how is she always in these types of movies.
The thing is Shay's actor is literally so drop dead gorgeous already 😭😭 she is beautiful. All of her features work together so well
Shay in that dress reminds me of Ada Wong from resident evil.
omg shay's reveal i LAUGHED so much 😭😭😭 this movie is so unserious wtfff and yes, youre right about people choosing pretty lmaooo, the concept feels outdated
Girl the WIG!!! IT LOOKS SO CHEAP did they get it off Amazon for $10??
They casted a bunch of pretty people, called them ugly until they put them in that gold filter. This should've been animated.
this movies would’ve devoured in the 2010s
no it wouldnt its a shitty adaptation of the book and its a terrible idea to make this book into a live action
@@emmacichor7054 but that's the era when plastic surgery trend was starting
@@emmacichor7054 i think if it had 2010 actors and 2010 cgi it would be %1000 better 😭
In the "Divergent is good enough I guess" era, yeah it totally would've
Why does her yassified self just look like M3gan 😭😭
Fully agree that they could not make this story work now without more edits.
We're basically living in this world now and they're not telling us anything we don't know.
I loved the books when I was younger but that was 20 years ago lolol
The bad thing about genetics is how it works lol
You can have 2 pretty people have ugly offspring, and you can have literally my middle school friend, who had both parents being ugly and they had FOUR CHILDREN including one set of twins and they were ALL GORGEOUS. It took me my ENTIRE adolescence to be considered kinda cute, only NOW that I'm almost 30 that I'm getting hotter and MY MOM HAS BEEN PRETTY HER ENTIRE LIFE. Genetics are so unfair istg
Fr I have a gorgeous mom but all I took from her is her legs, toes and hands lol😭😭
I'll take "people who this book was literally written for" for $200, alex
“If she’s called Squint wtf am I called?” I’m crying this was so me when my Asian mixed ass watched this last night
Funny how people kept referencing "Divergent" in the movie review of "Uglies" when one of the script writers of "Uglies", Vanessa Taylor, literally co-wrote the first "Divergent" movie 😂😂
But Divergent was based off a book written by a different person. And the movie kind of sucked as an adaptation.
I guarantee they added the scene with her Pretty solely so we could see her, just in case Netflix doesn't continue the series.
yeah, the first book ends with tally walking into some government building and being like lol make me pretty.
this movie would’ve ate down in 2014…. it tried to be another divergent & failed miserably.
As someone who’s read this book at least 3 times, this is NOT how I pictured any of this to go😭😭
You saying EWWWWW every time you saw nose made me laugh out loud because SAME
Story: *exists*
Trin: this is dumb just do eugenics
This movie wouldve been 100x better if they had leaned into how screwed up their perception of "beauty" was and just made them look crazy to point out how absurd beauty standards are
Netflix can’t convince me that Joey King is ugly when her pretty transformation is literally just her with makeup & blonde!
Yeah, they're not trying to. They're only "ugly" in the world of the story, to the people who are all surgically altered. None of them are actually ugly, and it's amazing people aren't understanding this. They're not actually ugly, it's just how the world treats them. That's the point. The real reason for the surgery is to effectively make everyone placid and easy to control. The ugly part is just the superficial reason given.
@@Kronzo888 i dont blame movie watchers for not getting it, the movie did a god awful job of workdbuilding and pacing to begin with. The books actually show that later with magizines in the smoke and later books, but the movie by itself kinda does send that message, especially since pretties in the movie are just smokey eye filters whereas in the books they were supposed to look wayy different and almost unhuman.
(Tho it is rlly frustrating trying to fill the gaps the movie left when talking/explaining parts of it to other ppl so I feel u there)
@@Kronzo888this! I don’t get how people don’t get that all beauty standards are stupidly since the people being told they’re ugly are never ugly! You can’t tell me that because a woman has a rectangular body shape (which is out of style right now) is actually ugly. You can’t tell me a woman is “ugly” just because she’s overweight. It’s just social constructs that were so brainwashed by that we can’t see the reality. Same like with most of us grew up thinking we were so ugly now I look back at young pictures of me and I was so cute. I was so brainwashed by social norms that I thought that because I didn’t have the body that was popular at the time I must be hideous. That’s the exact message of the books. That beauty standards are dumb and people don’t need all these surgeries to be loved.
@@SocialExperiment232 Yeah, exactly, but most people see the title, see the actors, and that's the entire extent of the meaning to them. I'm not even a fan of the film, and I think it has other issues, but this critique is so dumb because it's literally like, "Yeah, of course Joey King isn't ugly, that's the point." If you're gonna criticise something, criticise the right things.
@@Kronzo888 We understand it, but it’s just a dumb explanation. It doesn’t matter how pretty you are it’s about whether or not you had the surgery, but that’s just stupid if you use logic, pretty people already exist and the “pretty’s” barely look any different from normal people. We have celebrities who look worse than that! So yes, the criticism is valid. Had this movie made the “pretty’s” so modified they barely looked human anymore, then this would be a different story.
“we should not be making fun of people based of their looks, unless they are a horrible person” REAL
Making fun of people based on their looks is never okay like what the fuck of mindset do you guys have
Making fun of people based on their looks is never okay like what the fuck of mindset do you guys haveif you want to criticize them on their action, then criticize only their bad actions
Ahhh so glad to see you review this!! I read these books in high school and I think this is a really weird/interesting time to make a movie about them because from what I remember it just predicted so much of social media and our current culture. But then they made it a Netflix movie and cast the kissing booth actress as the lead….. did not have high hopes
noise at the beginning was so real hope u start feeling better thank u for putting urself through this u can make anything entertaining 😽
theres no way theyre making the other movies lol one of the main plotlines for the later books is shay creating a group of people who self harm to "unbrainwash" themselves
😳😳
Yeah to be honest i read the first book when i was like 14 but couldn't get through the rest of them even then, like the premise is interesting but that's about it, it got pretty boring afterwards
That part always made me feel gross when I read it as a teen (same with when Tally becomes special, and is genentically coded to be repulsed by disabled people 💀) I feel like they couldve made them adrenaline junkies instead of cutting, but im a lil sad ill never see me fav part of pretties when Tally finds the natural uglies that SC are monitering on reserves. I wish it was animated so badly to actually show all the cool tech and surgery mods from the books 🥲
The way I LOVED these books because they were subversive and interesting, but this was never going to be the live action adaptation they wanted 💀
EXACTLY😭
this one, no, but specials was a bit better and more YA/dystopian/live action.
Y'all need to read Tyra Banks book Modelland, it came out in 2011 and is so similar to this. No, I'm not joking. Yes, Tyra Banks wrote a YA novel. It's over 500 pages and is a WILD ride, literally gave me nightmares. Highly recommend 😂
Joey King will play a 16 year old for the next 90 years
THAT BEGINNING LMAO OH IM LOCKED IN
20:05 i love that her dog is just dreaming in the background😭😭
day 10?? oh trin i'm so sorry i can't even imagine
the "pretties" (idk what they's actually called) look sooo yassified, like it's giving 12 year old me discovering facetune type apps and playing around with them.
your dog dreaming in the background is so cute
If I could change my blue eyes, I would make them brown because I'm sick of being blinded every time I step outside without sunglasses, regardless of the season.
the crazy thing is that in the books being pretty is actually like horrifying like the modifications people get are actually kinda crazy not just like *makeup* lol
The Lucky Blue Smith jumpscare was crazy
I have watched three reactions to this movie and I still have no idea what the actual plot is or why people are being turned pretty in the first place lol
It’s not just plastic surgery it’s also brain surgery similar to a lobotomy that changes who they are and how they are. The government does it to keep them in line. Not sure if they mention in the movie, I’ve only read the books.
Watched it yesterday, the “plot” is that when people becoming pretty something in their brain is happening to make them stupid. That the Dr. can rule them easily. (I’m not joking this movie is nuts🥹)
@@meelliinna Oh i guess that makes sense. I just feel like there should be more of a motivation as of why these people are being turned pretty other than just because someone wants to "rule" them lol but it's whatever
the 2013 vibes are strong with this one holy shit
chase stokes’ wig is actually diabolical 😭😭😭
So when the pretties have children, do they just go straight to the ugly island? How does that work?
Yes I read the books years ago but essentially the population is sorted according to demographics, they get separated from a young age and are put in a different place where they get looked after by teachers and carers.
@@Andy_0017 oh that’s actually so sad
@mgtssacjo yes i don't recall a lot tbh the books were not that interesting to me but you can tell that people really don't have a sense of family, like there's not a mention of a parent ever
Where Tally ends up at the end is “New Pretty Town” where you stay from 16-25. After that you get another surgery to become “middle pretty” and have kids/job. Kids up to age 11 are “Littlies” and go to the Ugly dorms at 12
@@sheyannev2757 right thanks for clearing that up. that’s so interesting
literally the first thing i did after watching that movie was check to see if you had done a reaction. i have been WAITINGGGG FOR THIS
Girlll, DAY TEN???? prayers
I read the books and didn’t watch the show because I knew they weren’t able to properly pull off the plot without extreme CGI.
I could be remembering this incorrectly but the downside to becoming a pretty is that they all look the same, almost cookie cutter-esque, with only distinct features in colours of their eyes or hair. But they go through surgery to meet the “standard” of beauty with their facial features, weight, and height. It’s like the golden face ratio is being applied to all of them. The other downside is that they’re all brainwashed during the surgery to be happy with being the standard of pretty and all most pretties want to do is socialize and party.
Also the hoverboard thing was supposed to be a “secret” way of moving around town because the whole area had like old magnetic tracks to travel on in the past. They weren’t allowed to use them anymore because that type of travel was abandoned when they made the pretty utopia and seen as unsightly.
Honestly, I genuinely preferred the plot of the books to whatever they released to be put on my TV screen 😭
It would have been a more acceptable plotline if it was gay, like Shay was right there...
god your room looks so incredibly cozy
I read this book series as a teenager, its actually really good especially for YA. And it quite accurately predicts a lot of technology we ended up getting 😅 but yeah this movie wasn't quite it for me. we can talk sbout casting and weird more modern talk about identity etc (this book was written in the 2000s). My main issue was that it is very rushed. I didnt have time to get attached to anyone at all. the plot of the books is actually quite slow, they take a lot of time helping you believe in these bonds between people, the setting and context. They even give a really specific reasoning for why the hover boards work and how they only work in certain areas etc. Shay was definitely more interesting in the book, obvs the main character is meant to just be a self insert. Another issue i do have with the story is that the "pretty" procedure is something thats hard to put to screen, especially in modern times where we see filters etc every day. Its hard to convince us. When youre reading it on a page, you can inagine for yourself what that might look like - everyone could look weird af for all we know, but it would be normal to them. I mean the procedure literally involves peeling your skin off and replacing it, replacing just about every part of your body, its not so simple as they seem to show in the movie. Its supposed to be a bit horrifying lol
Isn't the whole point is that they're not actually ugly. Hence the "pretty" procedure not really changing them that much. The basis of becoming "pretty" is getting the procedure so they can be mind controlled.
YESS im so glad you gave us this commentary, it's giving nostalgic trin content
13:33 the 'choice between being pretty & being free' mini rant is better than this entire movie AT ITS OWN THEME. Ugh, I only vaguely remember the plot of these books but so many of the criticisms you make for the movie are explicitly covered as the point of the plot; Netflix didn't just drop the ball they threw it on the ground and it bounced back up in their face.
Truly one of the worst books I’ve ever read. Vanilla Pudding Girl isn’t sure she wants to become “Pretty”, hoverboards around endlessly, every cute boy she meets falls hopelessly in love with her, more hoverboarding ensues, more boys fall in love with her for no reason, hoverboarding, hoverboarding, down comes The System for some reason. Westerfeld is such a hack.
Truly though, even I was 14 i only read the first one but couldn't get through the rest, the premise is interesting but it lacks substance. Like this could've all been 1 single black mirror episode if even that
Not Vanilla Pudding girl 😭😭🤣🤣
The Tina Belcher groan at the beginning is so real, im sat
That noise that you made at the very beginning... I felt that in my soul lol
Trin: "If anything she should be called, like, doe eyes or something."
"Doey King", I mutter, laughing to myself.
when I saw the trailer, I literally thought it was a joke trailer and I was like, "How did they get this big actors to be in their sketch?"
26:00 she had doe eyes the whole movie and they called her “squint” but after she gets her surgery her eyes are actually smaller???? They’re trolling, right?? 😂
7:28 "he can't hear you, his nose is gone 🙄🙄" 😂😂
"It's too late... she's yassified" 😱
Literally just got done with watching challengers and now trin is wearing the ‘I told ya’ shirt 😂
When Dr. Cable said "ALL your procedures have been scheduled!" I couldn't help but laugh
She’s like 6ft 2inchs
They really tried to combine Divergent, The Hunger Games, and Maze Runner and thought it would work. 😭
To be fair, this book was written before those😅
@@real_cherita Oh ok! Didn’t know that! Thx for telling me! Some of themes were very similar as the other books but I was largely referring to the movies based on those books specifically. Some of the shots in this reminded me of shots from all of the other movies I mentioned. It seems like they tried to film this in the same way as those which was kinda weird to me lol.
@@TheAfricanGrey yep, they definitely tried to bring back the whole dystopian genre, I don’t know why they thought a 2010s trend would work in 2024🙃
@@real_cherita I think the only recent dystopian movie that had some success was the new Hunger Games movie about President Snow, but that doesn't really count because it's a part of an already established movie franchise.
They messed up Uglies as bad as The Giver!