User Reviews

This move is bad. Sadly 'bad' only has three letters. Maybe something more like 'execrable', 'horrific', or 'fantastically vile' would be more appropriate. Actually, I lean towards 'epic', as in epically bad.

Actually, this movie is a Rorschach test of a sort. Basically, do parents love their kids enough to sit through this piece of drek. The answer to that question is Yes, they do. On the way out of the movie I suggested (rather loudly) that any parent who takes their kid to this movie has earned the 'Hero Parent of the Millennium' award. Several people (total strangers) came up to me and agreed with me. It was that bad.

Some people might try to argue that this is a sold zero star movie. I disagree. I think this film dreams of being a zero star movie and never comes close. Sadly, we don't have a way to rate movies with negative stars. Perhaps this movie will inspire a new rating system with negative stars.

Now in all fairness, the CGI was impressive and the music wasn't that bad. Still, watching this movie is taking one for the team (your kids).

I suggest bringing earphones and listening to a good video. 'Super Volcanoes of the Pacific Northwest' comes to mind. A number theory video might help here.

This movie is so, so bad, that i don't even know where to begin.

This movie is a musical. You can clearly see it, since they break into singing at least every 5 seconds. The songs are also really bad, not catchy and really irritating to listen to.

The protagonist's motivation is solid, but it isn't really convincing. In Uglyville (terrible name) they have everything. A nice house, nice neighborhood, good food and so on. Still, she wants to go to the "real world." The antagonist, Lou, has no motivation. I can't think of a single reason as to why he's a villain. Also, the plot twist relating to him at the end was pointless. It brought nothing, it didn't solve any problems, it was there for the sake of having a plot twist. Some of the characters were also pointless.

The character design is atrocious. They don't reflect their personality at all. Also, the dolls aren't even ugly, which is the whole point of their appearance. Once they are supposed to look "pretty", they look even uglier than before.

The dialogue is horrible, the characters are annoying, the tone changes all the time. Sometimes the humor is absurdist, where nothing makes sense (not funny). Sometimes the humor is "normal", I guess (not funny). Sometimes the movie has a serious tone, which doesn't work, since I don't care about the characters. The mood is also ruined by a bad joke or one-liner.

Sometimes the movie just brought's something up when it's convenient. Like when the protagonist gets kidnapped, a random toaster appears out of nowhere to explain the situation to her friend. When the portal to greatness gets destroyed, all of the characters simply put the glass peaces together, even though they don't know, if it will fix anything. Spoiler, it does.

All and all, nothing makes any sense, everything about this movie is wrong. Just don't watch it.

In the adorably different town of Uglyville, weird is celebrated, strange is special and beauty is embraced as more than simply meets the eye. Millions of dolls are manufactured every year for kids to play. But what happens to those that are less than perfect? The ones who aren't perfect enough to hit the stores because of their irregularities go to Uglyville where all the rejected dolls are sent to live. One plucky doll named Moxy, played by Kelly Clarkson, believes that she will get chosen to be someone's doll eventually. She convinces her friends to join her in search of the big world, but instead, they come across the Institute for Perfection where dolls go through a series of tests to be paired with the right child.

Although its core idea is that we should accept one another despite our differences, 'UglyDolls' squanders this timeless lesson and reduces it to a film that doesn't know how to engage with its audience. Breaking into song at every occasion it gets to maximise the talents of its voice cast is the logical approach, but the tracks are neither well written nor composed to make them memorable. They end up becoming a drag, and it doesn't help that the rest of the plot isn't exactly innovative either. Add voice acting that's uninspired with almost every actor seemingly phoning in their lines. In this sea of weak performances, Janelle Monae makes a genuine attempt to make her character Mandy stand out, but her role is relatively small to make a significant difference.

To make matters worse, the animation and character design are both less than stellar. Although the 'ugly dolls' are made to look endearing enough, the 'perfect' dolls come across as poorly rendered video game ripoffs. The environment designs aren't memorable despite the limited areas the film is set in. The biggest blunder is the film's screenplay that goes all over the place as it's unable to keep its target audience in focus - it veers between catering to kids and then to adolescents, with its group dynamics, and the constant peer pressure to look a certain way. Sadly, this ends up being - and there's no joy in making this pun - an ugly mess.