In the adorably different town of Uglyville, weirdness is celebrated, strangeness is special and beauty is embraced as more than meets the eye. After travelling to the other side of a mountain, Moxy and her UglyDoll friends discover Perfection -- a town where more conventional dolls receive training before entering the real world to find the love of a child. Soon, the UglyDolls learn what it means to be different -- ultimately realizing that they don't have to be perfect to be amazing.
Kelly Clarkson, Nick Jonas, Janelle Monáe, Blake Shelton, Pitbull, Wang Leehom, Ice-T, Bebe Rexha, Charli XCX, and Lizzo. While it looks like a cat may have walked across my keyboard, alas no, these are the members of the cast list that are singers/songwriters. From this cast list alone, there is no doubt that this movie is much less a movie and more of a musical (or an 87-minute long advertisement for a soundtrack).
By and large, this is actually an enjoyable film. UglyDolls has some really nice animation with good rendering on the suede/felt textures of these dolls in Uglyville. The entirety of Uglyville is well designed. Composed of many odd shapes and designs, with bright colours (not too over-the-top in saturation, but just brighter than pastel colours). It creates a nice optimistic, yet soothing environment; something that is mirrored by the positivity of our main protagonist Moxy.
Moxy is driven by her need to feel the love of a child, something that seems heavily influenced by Pixar's Toy Story. In fact, there are several elements that feel like they have been copied from Toy Story 2 and 3. As such, there is little that is original about UglyDolls beyond the songs (which themselves are rather generic).
The songs are good, but they are overdone. They have a power and weight to them that is so in-your-face that it takes the focus away from the story, often removing the characters from the movie to sing in a fabricated music video, before returning them to the plot. When in the first 15 minutes, you already have three songs, you start to see these aren't songs being used to advance the plot, it is the story being used to bridge the songs. The latter being far less engaging. With an 87-minute runtime and a soundtrack length of 46 minutes, UglyDolls is half-song, half-plot.
UglyDolls has a theme around body positivity and being proud of your differences, which initially was impressive to have a message pushed with strength. The film then switches tack and for most of the remaining runtime, it spends song after song calling people ugly and pointing out how they will not be loved id they wear glasses, have crooked teeth, pimples, or different body shape. It's shocking to have a nice message undermined turned into something so poorly executed, that you have now given bullies a number of song and dance numbers they can use to make fun of their classmates.
Here are a few of the lyrics from The Ugly Truth sung by Nick Jonas:
You're much too short (Too short)
You're way too thin (Too thin)
Is that a blemish on your double chin? (Oh man)
Don't ever walk a runway (No)
Or man a kissing booth (Mwah)
You're U-G-L-Y (Ugly)
And that's the ugly truth
You ugly, ah ah, you ugly
You ugly, ah ah, you ugly
The animation team did a great job creating the environments, with a stark contrast between the odd but lovely, curvy, and colourful Uglyville, and the white, sterile, monotonous, straight-edged Institute of Perfection. The lighting shows how much effort was put in with backlighting really showing off the detail in the textures. There is no mature humour to keep the adults happy, but it is still entirely watchable.
UglyDolls is the same story we have seen many times and it replicates Pixar's films quite well, but it doesn't have that strong emotional attachment that Pixar has. Still, the pacing, colours, and songs are enough that the young ones will love it!