The film provides examples of the following tropes:
Banned in China: The film actually sparked a good deal of controversy in Canada because the very much underage actor buried his face in a naked and equally underage actress's crotch (or so it seemed... it never dawned on Moral Guardians that trick photography was used) and other stuff that the Brain Bleach mercifully washed away. These cases were overruled, eventually.
Dawson Casting: David Bennent (Oskar) was a child at the time of filming but he was not three years old, which was supposed to be the time in which he stopped aging. There is even a brief scene in which we see Oskar as a fetus in the womb.
