Imperfect, Unfiltered, and Exactly What It Should Be

MOVIE REVIEW
Pretty Ugly: The Story of the Lunachicks
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Genre: Documentary, Music
Year Released: 2026
Runtime: 1h 31m
Director(s): Ilya Chaiken
Where to Watch: in select theaters and on digital April 24, 2026

RAVING REVIEW: There’s a very specific kind of vibe that can’t be purposefully built or recreated once it’s gone, and PRETTY UGLY: THE STORY OF THE LUNACHICKS understands that better than most music documentaries. This isn’t a story trying to rewrite history into something for the mainstream audience or celebratory in a traditional sense. Instead, it leans into the chaos, the contradictions, and the reality of what it meant to be a group of women carving out space in a scene that didn’t welcome them, even if it meant breaking a few things along the way.

At its core, this is a film about identity just as much as it is about music. The Lunachicks weren’t just playing punk, they were living it in a way that felt confrontational, messy, and entirely their own. The documentary does a great job of letting that come through without overexplaining it. There’s a confidence in how the story is told, trusting that the band members' personalities will carry it, and they absolutely do.

Theo Kogan, Gina Volpe, Sydney Silver, and the rest of the group bring a larger-than-life presence that’s impossible to ignore. What stands out isn’t just their chemistry (and struggles), but the way their individual perspectives shape the narrative. This isn’t a unified story where everyone remembers things the same way. There are differences, tensions, and moments where it becomes clear that time hasn’t smoothed everything over, and that gives the film its strongest backbone.

What really pushes this beyond a standard music documentary is how unapologetically it celebrates who these women are and who they still are. There’s no reframing their past to fit a perfect narrative. The Lunachicks come across as intense, unpredictable, loud in every sense of the word, and that’s exactly the point. Their music hits with that same force: aggressive, fearless, and completely uninterested in being likable in a way that would lessen the songs' importance to the members. This film leans into that chaos rather than trying to control it, and in doing so, it makes a strong case for why they should be discussed alongside the most influential names in punk. Not because they followed the rules, but because they never did.

Archival footage plays a major role in tying everything together. There’s a rawness to those moments that contrasts with the present-day, more reflective interviews. You’re not just being told about who they were; you’re seeing it in real time, with all the truth of who they were intact. It reinforces the idea that what they built wasn’t curated; it was lived, often recklessly, and that’s part of what made it resonate.

The film connects by balancing humor with something more reflective. These are people who clearly have a shared history that’s both meaningful and complicated. The jokes feel more resonant, the stories are entertaining, but there’s also an undercurrent of what it cost to live that way for as long as they did. The documentary doesn’t dwell on it too heavily, but it’s there, adding a layer that keeps this from feeling like just another retrospective.

Sometimes the film feels like it’s jumping between moments without settling into them, which can make certain parts of their journey feel less defined. It never completely loses its footing, but there’s a sense that a tighter approach could have made the emotional throughline hit even harder. I think, importantly, you have to remember that this isn’t about events that just happened, though. The rise, the chaos, the fallout, the reunion, it’s all here in some form. What keeps it from feeling predictable is the personalities at the center. It works, but it doesn’t always challenge expectations in the way the band itself once did.

PRETTY UGLY: THE STORY OF THE LUNACHICKS is a remarkable experience, especially in how committed it is to letting these women define themselves on their own terms. There’s no attempt to reshape their story into something more palatable. The film respects who they were and who they are now, even when those two versions don’t align. These women deserve the spotlight to tell their story, and they get it here!

What lingers in the end isn’t just the music or the legacy, but the relationships. This is a story about people who went through something together and are still figuring out what that means years later. That’s where the film finds its center, not in nostalgia, but in the reality of what lasts after everything else fades. PRETTY UGLY: THE STORY OF THE LUNACHICKS doesn’t try to be a definitive music doc, but it does become the definitive word on these badasses who didn’t even realize what they were creating, even when they were at the peak of their journey. It’s occasionally uneven, but always honest in a way that feels true to the band it’s documenting.

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[photo courtesy of GIANT PICTURES, CONCORD ORIGINALS, GLASS EYE PIX, ILCHICK PICTURES, STORYVILLE FILMS]

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