- Americans Hate Tingle: The movie was considered ground-breaking in its native Denmark and fellow Scandinavian countries, often being considered a cult classic. However, outside Scandinavia, especially in the United States and (some-what) the United Kingdom, certain viewers criticized elements such as the way the characters act, disturbing scenes you wouldn't expect to see in your average animated films, poor voice acting in both US and UK dubs (mostly the former), and the main character constantly getting tortured, with people also making unfavorable comparisons to other films and shows such as Sir Billi and Stressed Eric (both of which were critically panned, even in their respective countries, Scotland and the UK). Not helping that the US dub, while not being as terrible as people say it is, is widely considered to be rather lousy to most people.
- Animation Age Ghetto: The movie tackles some very controversial concepts, yet it was marketed (though in an overtly sarcastic manner) as "the family movie of the year" and won a Danish award for best movie for kids and families. However, this may have been less due to people assuming it was for kids and more due to Values Dissonance; Danes don't consider it a big deal to let children watch that kind of stuff.
- The film also had an "11" rating in Scandinavian countries the target audience is kids in the Scandinavian version of junior high school (that is kids in Terkel's age)
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: A lot of the musical numbers.
- Memetic Mutation: In Denmark, it has created a few memes.
- The chorus of "Barry King of Cool" in Danish is one. ("Arne han er for cool"/"Arne he is so cool").
- As is Silas' "Det swinger!" from the end of the same song.
- Jason's "You never know when you're going to need a iron pipe" is one too.
- In Sweden, the "Fuck off and die"-song is legendary.
- Special Effect Failure: The American dub edited much of the Danish text shown in the movie to English text. In some instances, such as Leon reading the newspaper
and Dorit's letter it's actually edited in pretty well, but most of the time the editing is distractingly poor, notably with the blood written message Terkel wakes up to find. - Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Excluding Terkel, Jason and Johanna, everyone is completely unsympathetic and unlikable. Either they're apathetic towards Terkel's problems (especially his parents) or they're downright cruel to him. Despite the humor, the film is rather depressing to watch for a lot of people.
- Values Dissonance: While countries like the UK or America would be shocked to see this film promoted as a kids film, dark, cynical comedies (like Louie) are much more culturally accepted in Denmark than the UK or America.
- What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The movie has an "11-years and up" rating in Denmark, and it even won an award there for best movie for children and family. If that isn't enough, the movie's DVD cover actually says, "The family film of the year"note on it! Though if you have watched the film, you can see that it is not "kid friendly" WHATSOEVER.
- However, most movies on average have the 11 age-rating in Scandinavia and is the most frequent age rating there. The rating 11 is function both like PG, PG-13 and even R which acts almost like the default rating and are not synonyms for "kid's movies targeted at kids" here! This is because of their culture, where 11 is the age when people start to develop more mature mindset and much more tolerable to most things! Their highest rating 15 requires more gore and sexual nudity and is more similar to the NC-17!
- The Swedish DVD drew a line over the word family and added "psycho" beneath it, written like graffiti.
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