New Netflix movie ‘Uglies’ lands terrible Rotten Tomatoes score
The longer a completed movie sits on the shelf, gathering dust, the more likely it is to be terrible. With that in mind, nobody should be shocked that Uglies has been taking a complete and utter pasting from critics since premiering on Netflix.
In fairness, the warning signs and alarm bells had been there from the very beginning. For one thing, the craze for adapting young adult dystopian and/or fantasy fiction for the big screen fizzled out a long time ago, and for every Twilight and The Hunger Games, there were a dozen Mortal Engines or City of Embers.
There’s also the fact that director McG hasn’t made a great movie in his entire career despite having made ten previous attempts before Uglies. The filmmaker has become a Netflix regular after helming The Babysitter, its sequel Killer Queen, Rim of the World, and Family Switch for the streamer, but his latest might be the worst one yet.
Scott Westerfeld’s source novel has plenty of fans and sold a lot of companies, with Netflix presumably eying a franchise when there are three additional entries in the literary series. However, after witnessing the critical evisceration to greet Uglies, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume it’s going to be a one-and-done.
Principal photography wrapped in December, 2021, and history has shown that any movie forced to wait almost three years for its release more than likely isn’t going to be worth the wait. Sure enough, Uglies has crashed and burned by way of being resoundingly panned, with the instantly forgettable fantasy currently sitting on a paltry Rotten Tomatoes approval rating of just 19 per cent.
It’s probably going to do well in terms of viewership when star and executive producer Joey King has previous with Netflix as the focal point of the popular Kissing Booth trilogy, while co-star Chase Stokes headlines the cast of another streaming smash hit in Outer Banks, and Laverne Cox was an integral part of the platform’s Orange Is the New Black.
Based on a trio of nameworthy stars and the books having a fandom of their own, a lot of subscribers are going to watch Uglies, regardless of whether or not they’re going to enjoy what they find. It feels like a film that’s several years out of date, which makes perfect sense because that’s exactly what it is, with cameras having stopped rolling 33 months before the finished article dropped on streaming.