Change destroys bonds but create new ones – that’s the message in McG’s adaptation of the young adult film Uglies. The new Netflix movie has children and teens living in kibbutzim but if those kibbutzim have architecture that’s post apocalyptic. When these teens turn sixteen, they get surgery to be Pretty and cross a bridge to the other side. Tally ‘Squint’ Youngblood (Joey King) and ‘Nose’ Peris (Chase Stokes) promised to meet each other on the other side. But as these things go, she sneaks out and discovers that Nose doesn’t remember her after he had surgery. Tally, then, meets Shay (Brianne Tju, telling her that there’s a community of the Uglies in a place they call The Smoke. Shay comes first, Tally comes later, and after the latter, Peris and the Pretties invade The Smoke.

The film is a pretty easy (shallow) one to interpret – imagine The Lobster but someone who’s a young adult. Also, if the villain, Dr. Cable, has Laverne Cox, a Black trans woman, playing her, especially during the recent discourse. It is a curious decision for her to play a Black trans villain but not a campy, fun one. It’s also interesting that Uglies gives her not just one adversary but two, the second being David (Keith Powers). David is ‘ugly’ – normal looking in photos but is beautiful in movement, and I’m disappointed that he’s not ‘ugly’. That beauty feels conspicuous even when they’re all in the wooden areas bordering the two cities and the Smoke. At least the action sequences are competent, reminding us that McG was once a decent, fun Hollywood genre director.

Cable kidnaps David’s mother, the latter trying to rescue her without a plan and Tally reminds him of that. Because Uglies is YA, ships matter, and the film gives Tally three love interests from the two mainstream genders. There’s tension between Tally and all three and King can work up an organic chemistry among all of them. The switch from Shay to David is seamless enough – there’s some jealousy without making either love interest seem villainous. Besides, there are bigger concerns here, like whether David’s mother survives or whether McG can revive the YA genre. This has some moments of visual flair, reminding viewers that light looks good in nature, pretty, if obviously symbolic. Daylight makes the forest look great and the cities look like negligible CGI but the nighttime makes both look terrible, just like this film.