The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Barry Hertz
The new animated film UglyDolls is a lazy flip, its main intention to foster the toy-aisle bond between kids and its quasi-hideous title characters.
China, Canada, United States · 2019
Rated PG · 1h 27m
Director Kelly Asbury
Starring Kelly Clarkson, Nick Jonas, Janelle Monáe, Blake Shelton
Genre Family, Animation, Music
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In the adorably different town of Uglyville, weirdness is celebrated, strangeness is special and beauty is embraced as more than meets the eye. After traveling 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.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Barry Hertz
The new animated film UglyDolls is a lazy flip, its main intention to foster the toy-aisle bond between kids and its quasi-hideous title characters.
Doubling as both a colorful recycling bin for tropes and ideas from a variety of preexisting children animated features and a casting session for “The Voice”‘s next batch of hosts, Kelly Asbury’s plush-inspired film UglyDolls is underscored by a well-intentioned message of self-acceptance, even if the delivery vehicle is unremarkable.
The UglyDolls film makes the most obvious choice at every conceivable opportunity, and is all the more tolerable for that.
What’s self-worth in the 21st century without a dollar amount attached to it, and what value does UglyDolls have if kids aren’t walking out of the theater nagging their parents for toys of their favorite characters?
The New York Times by Glenn Kenny
Every aspect of this computer-animated movie directed by Kelly Asbury seems equally overdetermined and tossed-off, as if it were a caffeinated weekend project for everyone involved.
The A.V. Club by Jesse Hassenger
Adults in charge might want to take a cue from the movie’s penny-pinching, and save some money on movie tickets.
Ultimately, it’s a standard formula for a kid’s movie (and standard formulas are standard for movies that are also toy ads). UglyDolls isn’t particularly inventive or outstanding.
Chicago Tribune by Katie Walsh
For a film about outlandishly kooky dolls, the film sure is flat, listless and narratively bland.
The Hollywood Reporter by Keith Uhlich
Nearly eight years on from the signing of all the brand extension contracts, here is the primarily pop-star-voiced animated musical UglyDolls, an imbecilic eyesore that could lay claim to being one of the worst movies ever made if it was worth such hyperbole.
UglyDolls is “Trolls Lite,” and the way things work I have no doubt we’ll be seeing a movie in the next few years that’s “UglyDolls Lite.” Yet this is still a winsomely appealing and joke-happy bauble for kiddies.
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