I truly believe that the Hunger Games books are some of the best genre novels of this century and that author Suzanne Collins has masterfully told a story about capitalism, propaganda and war theory in a way that is accessible to younger readers. As such, I am constantly defending the young adult dystopia genre and fighting back against its reputation for being overly dramatic, unrealistic and full of unnecessary love triangles that come with gimmicky action sequences. Films like the Netflix adaptation of Ugly Make this defense like this, So a burden on my soul.

Based on Scott Westerfeld’s book of the same name, which became the first series in 2005, and starring Joey King (The Princess) and Laverne Cox (Orange is the new black), Ugly is full of slick but boring CGI, stilted acting, and a plot that relies on all the lazy cliches dystopian young adult novels are known for. Director McG and screenwriters Jacob Forman, Vanessa Taylor, and Whit Anderson are about 10 years late: the themes of this film may have been passable in 2014, but in 2024 the whole project seems so out of touch with reality.

(Editor’s note: This post contains setup spoilers for Ugly.)

Ugly is set in a future world where everyone has to undergo plastic surgery at the age of 16 to become “Pretties”, the most beautiful versions of themselves. They live in a glamorous city where they only party and have fun. Tally (King) is a 15-year-old who dreams of the day when she can have the surgery and become a Pretty, like her best friend Peris (Chase Stokes).

While waiting for her birthday, Tally meets and befriends the rebellious Shay (Brianne Tju), who tells her about an underground resistance group in the wilderness. Shay runs away to join the rebels, and the town leaders enlist Tally to find her and defeat the renegades. But while living among the rebels, Tally learns that being a pretty girl comes with a hidden price. Oh, and she also develops a crush on the rebel group’s fearless leader, David (Keith Powers).

The biggest problem with Ugly is not necessarily a bad adaptation; it is just an adaptation that feels so dated that it almost seems like a parody. The original novel actually came out years before The Hunger Games really got the dystopia trend rolling. Many of its tropes—a rebellion led by a stylish teenager; a futuristic city where everyone is glamorous and beautiful except for our scrappy heroine; a society based on separating people with capitalized adjectives—actually predate the resentment they ultimately engendered. But ever since the Uglies series was a chart-topping bestseller, the frequency of these tropes has become the primary evidence for critics of dystopian young adult fiction.

While Ugly did many of these over-the-top plot elements first, in 2024, the story feels dated and derivative. And the film has little to offer beyond what’s on paper. The acting is overwhelmingly stilted, though some characters’ relationships are more interesting than others. Shay and Tally’s friendship, which grew out of sneaking away from their dorm together, is compelling. But Tally and David’s romance feels odd and almost like a genre duty. It doesn’t help that 25-year-old King is already testing the boundaries of looking like a scrappy 16-year-old, while Powers is 32 and looks the part. In fact, aside from King, all of the “teen” characters show their actual ages (late 20s to early 30s), which makes the claim that they’re all just 16 really odd.

Visually, Ugly is completely uninspired. The nameless futuristic city is so generic that it feels like a standard Windows XP screensaver, and the wilderness where the rebel group hides out is also profoundly uninteresting. Nothing about the costume design stands out, not even the haute couture the Prettys are supposedly wearing. The only unique set piece is the rusted remains of an amusement park that Shay and Tally sneak into to ride their hoverboards, but it’s only used briefly. (And although the Ugly Book did it first, a destroyed Ferris wheel was a big set piece in Divergent.)

There is a deeper thread in Uglyone that could take Westerfeld’s groundwork on conformity from the 2005 novel and use it to actually say something interesting about Eurocentric beauty ideals. This theoretical version of the film could join the current discussion about cosmetic influencers, plastic surgery, and celebrity culture. But Forman, Taylor, and Anderson don’t go any deeper than the surface of the original story, and McG doesn’t make any interesting choices in bringing it to the screen. Ugly is ultimately another unimaginative, forgettable entry in the flood of dystopian young adult films that make my passionate defense of the genre a real pain.

Ugly is now available on Netflix.