New drama movie Uglies hasn’t been welcomed to Netflix with a warm reception, as viewers have panned the Joey King project.
What’s more, the dystopian flick, released yesterday, has a dreary score of just 21% on review site Rotten Tomatoes.
Starring 25-year-old Kissing Booth star Joey, Uglies is set in a futuristic dystopia with enforced beauty standards and follows a teen awaiting mandatory cosmetic surgery as she embarks on a journey to find her missing friend.
The case also includes Chase Stokes and Laverne Cox.
Despite its promising ensemble, film fanatics haven’t taken the new release to their hearts, blasting its messaging as ‘stale’, comparing the movie to a ‘throwaway project’, and accusing its use of CGI of being ‘generic’.
Taking to Rotten Tomatoes, where TV and film reviews from around the world are published, both critics and viewers alike gave poor feedback.
Marking just one out of a possible five stars, film critic Jonathan Wilson wrote: ‘The setting, outfits, CGI, action, and worldbuilding are so generic that, rather impressively, there isn’t a single element of the entire production that stands out as interesting, unique, or inspired.’
Kristen Maldonado said Uglies ‘would’ve been an absolute hit in the early 2000s’ but it now feels ‘outdated’.
‘The script is awkward and the social commentary is stale. I wish they took bigger risks and updated the source material,’ she added.
Meanwhile, audience member Cormac C went out of their way to leave a negative review: ‘I never rate movies but this movie was so bad that I felt like it needed to be held accountable. Netflix can do so much better.’
Feeling let down, Kristina W said: ‘I read the books when they came out and reread them last year in anticipation of the movie. I was so disappointed, they rushed everything and the chemistry between characters just wasn’t there. As a huge fan of the books, this movie was a disappointment.’
It wasn’t all bad, though, as Priya D sang the film’s praises: ‘It’s brilliant. You need every young girl and boy to watch this!’
Sal M also gave it four stars, penning in the comments that Uglies ‘was an interesting new spin on YA (young adult) dystopia future movies’ and praising it for being similar to The Hunger Games.
Alas, there’s no denying that the response to Uglies has been overwhelmingly negative, with an average rating of 3.4 out of five stars from critics.
Audience ratings averaged at 3.3 out of 10, with 19 categorising it under ‘rotten’.
Speaking ahead of Uglies’ release, lead Joey hailed the film as ‘a nod to my younger self’.
‘I was 11 years old when I read these books, and they were so impactful to me at that age, and they really helped carry me through my teen years. I was about 17 or 18 when I pitched Uglies to Netflix to make as a movie,’ she told Deadline.
‘It wasn’t until I was 22 that we actually filmed them, and now I’m 25 and they’re finally coming out. So I have been with this book for a really, really long time, and I think it’s really cool because I’ve gone through so many changes as an actress and as a person in this industry, and so having this be something that I can really just give a nod to my younger self is really special.
‘It’s crazy how long it took to get here.’
Watch Uglies on Netflix.
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