Even though they’re made to be ugly, there’s something adorable about UglyDolls. Launched in 2001 by David Horvath and Sun-Min Kim, the deliberately weird-looking monster dolls are built on the idea that their differences are what make them special and the new animated musical about them, UglyDolls, is driven by the same idea. In the wrong hands, that message could feel hollow, a shameless corporate attempt to capitalize on messages of self-love to sell toys to children. Instead, UglyDolls isn’t just the best children’s film of the year so far, it’s one of the best movies of 2019 so far, period.
Voiced and sung by Kelly Clarkson, Blake Shelton, Pitbull, Janelle Monae, Nick Jonas and many more, it follows Clarkson’s Moxy as she leads her fellow dolls out of Uglyville in hopes of making it to the Big World, where they will fulfill their destinies of making children happy. Instead, they reach Perfection, a town filled with dolls who look like models and are led by the charming but sinister Lou (Jonas). It’s a standard kid’s movie premise, but director Kelly Asbury and crew manage to make it feel fresh.
While there are a lot of reasons the film is so good, let’s start with the music. Though Disney Animation still makes great animated musicals, it feels like decades since the genre’s late-20th Century heyday. So, it’s thrilling to realize what a throwback to that period UglyDolls is. With songs by Christopher Lennertz (Medal of Honor, Supernatural) and Glenn Slater (3-time Tony nominee and co-creator of Tangled), the film follows a classic Broadway musical structure.
It opens with, “Couldn’t be Better,” a great group number that introduces us to the main cast and the world they inhabit. Kelly Clarkson’s Moxxy gets a really fun, downbeat “I Want” song in “Today’s the Day” and Nick Jonas’s Lou gets an equally thrilling intro/villain song with “The Ugly Truth.” Each song is well-produced (perhaps even over-produced in the way so much music for children can be) and the voice cast is universally excellent—yes, even Executive Producer, Pitbull. That said, the real revelation is Clarkson, whose vocal control and virtuosity is so stunning, it begs the question: why hasn’t she done Broadway yet?
Still, good as the cast and songs are, the writing of both the song lyrics and the script itself elevate the movie. Though moments where offscreen characters toss jokes into the middle of more important dialogue are funny (a fawning Perfect doll begs Lou to let her run his gauntlet), one of the best bits of writing is Monae’s first song as Mandy, “All Dolled Up.” At first, it seems like a lighthearted makeover song, but as it progresses, the self-hate fueling the supposed self-improvement becomes more pronounced, finally ending in a downbeat reprise where Mandy wishes she were someone else. It’s a surprisingly subversive moment in a film filled with them. It’s unfortunate, then, that the filmmaking itself weren’t just a touch more unexpected.
Though UglyDolls looks no more distinct than the average CG animated film, head of animation, Sébastien Bruneau, and his team clearly paid attention to the details. While the choice to make both Uglyville and Perfection out of toys is clever, the dolls themselves are most impressive. When Moxy runs, she bounces in the way a toy would if a child were playing pretend. When Lou tosses his hair, it looks and moves like yarn and you instinctively know exactly what it would feel like.
Still, the most impressive moment comes when Lou sings “The Ugly Truth.” The performance is staged and produced like a big concert and while that’s all fun, the best moment is something most will probably miss. In one shot, as Lou sings toward the viewer, we also see him on a giant screen behind him. Yet we don’t just see a single reflection. Instead, the animators painstakingly recreate what it looks like when a live camera catches a projection of what it’s recording: it shows a cascading series of Lous one right after the other, each subsequent image in the chain moving a fraction slower than the one before it. It’s a small moment, but the attention to detail there speaks to how lovingly made every aspect of the film is.
Simply put, UglyDolls is a great movie. It’s smart, funny and has a positive message that will instruct the children in the audience without boring their parents in the process. The voice performances are universally solid and the songs are just as clever and subversive as they are catchy. Sure, it’s technically for kids, but a movie this good is for everyone.
