Director: McG
Turning sixteen means one mandatory surgery in this world: the operation that erases every so-called flaw and remakes you as a Pretty, and Tally Youngblood is the teenager who starts asking why anyone has to sign up for it.
What is Uglies about?
Set in a post-scarcity future where physical difference has been legislated out of existence, the story follows Tally Youngblood, a girl counting down the months until her sixteenth birthday and the extreme cosmetic surgery that will transform her from an "Ugly" into a "Pretty." Everyone in her city has already crossed that threshold or is waiting to, and belonging to the glittering world across the river has always felt inevitable rather than chosen. That certainty cracks when Tally is pulled into contact with people who reject the operation altogether, forcing her to weigh the promise of effortless beauty against everything she would have to give up to get it. Joey King plays Tally as someone whose loyalty gets tested from multiple directions at once, with Brianne Tju, Keith Powers, Chase Stokes, and Laverne Cox filling out a young cast caught between the city's enforced sameness and a resistance that lives outside its rules. Director McG builds the film's world around that divide, letting the surgery itself stand in for every kind of social pressure to conform.
Cast & crew
Joey King carries the film as Tally, with Brianne Tju and Keith Powers playing the friends who pull her in opposite directions, and Laverne Cox appearing as a figure from outside the city's rules.
Context & significance
Uglies adapts Scott Westerfeld's young-adult novel of the same name, one of a wave of dystopian-teen adaptations built around a single irreversible rite of passage, and arrived on screen in 2024 as a United States production directed by McG.
Where & how to watch
Uglies is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, built for viewers who prefer a Farsi-first streaming experience. Reading about the film requires no account, and a free K-Time login is all that's needed to press play.