If you staged a retrospective of all the new millennium animated features that espoused the idea ‘Accept Yourself For Who You Are’, it would double the running time of the MCU and then some. The latest picture to peddle the message is UglyDolls, a vehicle for the 2001Trolls-a-like toy line that is so Candy Crush- gaudy, bereft of laughs, and shot through with sugary sentiment it makes The Angry Birds Movie 2 look like I, Daniel Blake.
With a story by Robert Rodriguez (who also produces), UglyDolls sees a mis-manufactured set of dolls cast out into the world where they set up a shanty town — Uglyville— for the oddballs and misshapen. A pink monster with a missing tooth, Moxy (Clarkson) is a cockeyed optimist who believes the stories about the Big World, the mythical place where toys are played with and loved by children. Not wishing to give up on her dream, she leads a sortie with her buddies — Lucky Bat (Wang Leehom), Uglydog (Pitbull), Wage (Wanda Sykes), Babo (Gabriel Iglesias) — to find the Big World.
The gang end up at The Institute Of Perfection, a finishing school for the beautiful and flawless toys run by pop star-styled Lou (Nick Jonas), backed by a Heathers-esque hareem (voiced by Janelle Monáe, Bebe Rexha, Charlie XCX and Lizzo, which sounds like a great line-up for Saturday night at Glastonbury). What follows is a battle of wits as the UglyDolls battle the faultless figures, making it crystal clear at every stage that you have to embrace your physical and personal blemishes whatever form they take. As such, play a bingo card with phrases like ‘Show Them Who You Are’ or ‘Believe In Yourself’ to whip up engagement and tension the film can’t muster.
As it cycles through obvious story beats and set-pieces, there is not enough plot to fill the meagre running time so is padded out with far too many forgettable pop songs that employs it’s A-list singing talent without you ever noticing — the songs also mostly take place in a fantasy pop video netherworld rather than in the locales of the film, making them feel separate from the narrative. Some of it works — there’s a nice running gag about the literal naming of the characters such as Gibberish Cat and Exposition Robot — but the animation looks cheap and cookie-cutter, while the whole thing is dominated by an unambitious, play-it-safe mentality. It’s innocuous, well-intentioned and mercifully short, but even the least-demanding youngsters deserve more.
