Pretty Ugly People

Written and directed by Tate Taylor, Pretty Ugly People follows Missi Pyle’s Lucy as she decides to unveil her dramatic weight loss to a group of college friends during a wilderness getaway – with the movie detailing the long-buried secrets and resentments between the characters that are inevitably revealed. It’s ultimately rather shocking just how little within Pretty Ugly People actually works, as first-time filmmaker Taylor offers up a uniformly unlikable assortment of characters and expects their plotless antics to carry the movie through an often punishing 99 minute running time. There’s little doubt, then, that a surprisingly talented cast is left floundering with material that couldn’t possibly be weaker and more superficial, with folks like Melissa McCarthy, Josh Hopkins, Jack Noseworthy, and Octavia Spencer trapped within the confines of one-dimensional figures that uniformly undergo eye-rollingly obvious character arcs (eg Spencer’s put-upon wife leaves her stick-in-the-mud husband, McCarthy’s put-upon wife stands up to her stick-in-the-mud husband, etc, etc). The simplistic vibe ensures that the viewer has absolutely nothing invested in the fates and happiness of these people, and it is, as such, not a shock to discover that the movie grows more and more interminable as it limps towards its ludicrously upbeat finale – which effectively cements Pretty Ugly People‘s place as an uncommonly horrible debut from a filmmaker who’s obviously gone onto bigger and better things.

1/2* out of ****