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  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Is Amy's mother telling her that it is fine if she doesn't come to the wedding acknowledging that the restrictiveness of such traditions and the role she was being made to fill was alienating for Amy? Or was it her telling Amy that she has been dishonored and her presence would be embarrassing?
    • Is Amy's decision to run away in the middle of the dance competition due to the audience's negative reactions towards the Cuties? Or was it because the wedding confetti that had gotten stuck to her hair causes a Heel Realization from her about how much trouble she has caused her family due to her actions?
    • The ending. Does Amy refusing to attend her father's wedding by deciding to play jump rope with some girls outside her house an indication that Amy has found a middle ground from the ultra-traditionalist beliefs in Islamic culture and the societal sexualization of young girls in Western culture? Or is she actively deciding to behave like a regular eleven-year-old after being pulled back and forth by those aforementioned vastly opposite cultures?
    • The Cuties themselves.
      • Is their participation in a mature dancing troupe an escapism from at-home problems? Or are they being spoiled by their parents to the point where they encourage their participation in minor-sexualizing trends to show that they think young adolescents aren't little kids anymore, rather than trying to exploit them?
      • The Cuties are shown to have a rivalry with a Psycho Rangers counterpart, the "Sweety Swags". Could the Cuties have initially been innocent children who performed more innocent dancing, but then faced bullying by the Swags due to contrasting maturity levels in their fashion and choreography, leading them to want to become Hotter and Sexier?
  • Americans Hate Tingle: The film was successful in France and barely generated controversy there, but once the movie poster was revealed in the US by Netflix, it rose controversy to the sky with complaints about the child actresses being portrayed in sexualized poses. It only got worse after the film was released and portrayed more content than the original poster implied, and audiences called attention to the content that went against the movie's intended message.
  • Audience-Alienating Premise: The movie was popular in its native France and its story of a young Muslim girl rebelling against her conservative, strict, restrictive-for-women native Senegalese culture is based on the experiences of the film's director. Then Netflix bought the international distribution rights for the film and caused one of the most disastrous, needlessly self-inflicted wounds in the history of films. It promoted the film as a sexy dance film with 11-year-old girls. The original trailer and poster were both unrepresentative of the film and wildly sexualized. The poster for example, features the four girls in their skimpy dance outfits and one of them in mid-twerk. Netflix quickly changed the marketing to more accurately reflect the film’s plot, but the damage was done and the film is only remembered for the original marketing.
  • Awesome Music: The soundtrack sports some pretty cool and infectious songs with smooth, electrifying beats like "Dame Mas De Eso", "What I Want", "I Won't Stop", and "Keep It Up".
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
    • In one of the movie's many controversial scenes, Amy's mother and aunt try to exorcise the supposed demon that's possessing Amy by throwing water at her when they catch wind of her out-of-control behavior. Amy begins to shake and convulse as if the "evil spirit" is trying to fight, until the camera pans down to reveal that she's actually twerking until eventually going down on all fours, and continues to do so as the water continues splashing on her, wearing nothing but a simple tank top and panties, until she suddenly stops and relaxes as if she just had an orgasm. Since this moment was never brought up again, one can't help but question what the point of that scene was.
    • A scene near the end where Amy's traditional dress and her dancing outfit are on her bed and are seemingly "alive", moving on their own. By extension, every time Amy has an Imagine Spot, such as her traditional dress bleeding before she has her first period or her vision of a "ghost" that represents her possible future as a (stereo)typical African tribeswoman. And the Gainax Ending. These scenes really clash with what is a grounded, down-to-earth film.
  • Broken Aesop: A major problem with the declared intent of criticizing oversexualization of children in Western culture is that the film kind of forgets to actually do that. There's no discernible antagonist pressuring the Cuties to incorporate sexual elements into their dance routines, like a stage parent or a sleazy producer. Furthermore, the girls never really suffer any consequences of their behavior, at least none that would actually befall children who engage in such practices. In fact, the only time their lewd dancing is plot-relevant, it helps them get out of trouble. The only real consequence the girls suffer, that being booed by the audience for their dance routine in the climax, seems to outwardly imply that Western culture does not approve of or condone children engaging in such sexualized behavior.
  • Broken Base: Even for a movie as controversial as this one, some people are willing to look past the suggestive portrayal of the underage actresses and deem it vital In-Universe to the movie's plot, with some actually praising the movie for its discouragement of minors' sexualization by Western society, however even ignoring the filming aspects, some people still think it isn’t good on its own merits due to the characters being unlikable and never facing consequences for their actions.
  • Critical Dissonance:
    • On Rotten Tomatoes, the film sits at a respectable 87% approval rate from professional critics (82% from top critics) with an average score of 7 out of 10 (7.6 from top critics), while its audience score sits at a mere 15% (which is up from a measly 3% when the film was first released in 2020) and an average score of 1.2 out of 5; on Metacritic, it has a 67 out of 100 from critics and 10 from audiences.
    • Common Sense Media gives the film a 4-out-of-5-star rating by the nonprofit reviewer, while most user reviews by both kids and adults give it a 1/5 star rating.
    • Many independent critics on sites such as YouTube panned the movie, arguing that it wasn’t good on its own merits even disregarding the film's questionable portrayal of its underage actresses.
  • Death of the Author: People tend to ignore that the film criticizes loose sexual attitudes towards children in France, first because it veers into Do Not Do This Cool Thing and secondly because the aspect of the risqué dance serves almost no purpose to the plot; a lot of it could've happened even without those scenes. The fact that it ends in a Gainax Ending with a lot of loose ends where the dancing aspect may have been involved doesn't help matters at all. Nor does the botched international marketing that made many people think it seemed exactly like what it was criticizing, muddying the intended message further.
  • Designated Villain: Amy's mother and aunt, supposedly, for their traditional beliefs about women and their role in their culture. Even when they discover Amy's out-of-control behavior and provocative wardrobe, their reactions weren't that unjustified since, in the mother's words, "You lied to me. You steal from me," which are things that Amy actually did. Granted, the mother's first response was to slap her but for the most part, she was panicking and sobbing while any other conservative Muslim family could've done much worse.
  • Do Not Do This Cool Thing: For a movie intended to criticize the sexualization of minors in modern culture, the camera has a lot of suggestive shots of the girl actresses during the dance scenes.
  • Don't Shoot the Message: While most agree with the film's intended message against sexualizing minors, they can't help but feel the film grossly muddled the message by filming the dance scenes with the child actresses in an overly sexual light.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: The scene where the Cuties accuse the security guards of being pedophiles in response to "being groped" by them (in actuality, they were using appropriate restraint since the girls trespassed into the arcade and were trying to escape once caught as if they did nothing wrong) becomes less funny following the accusations of Netflix "promoting pedophilia" both pre- and post-release. In-Universe, the scene becomes grosser when one of the guards is shown smiling as Amy begins twerking to prove she and the Cuties are part of a dancing competition, implying that he's into it (he even tells the girls "See you at the show!" in an excited voice, to which his co-worker chides him by saying "Seriously?").
  • Misaimed Marketing: Outside of its native France, this film became infamous for its mishandled international marketing, seeming to promote the film as a Hotter and Sexier Step Up knockoff with underage girls, the exact opposite of its message.
  • Nausea Fuel:
    • Coumba finds a used condom and plays with it like a balloon in the typical fashion of a child who is oblivious to its use, but the other girls quickly catch on and scream in horror, afraid that she might've contracted AIDS from it. What makes it worse is that Coumba genuinely didn't know what it was and begins to cry. To that end, the girls try washing her mouth with soap and water.
    • Arguably, the creepiest scene in the movie is when Amy's cousin confronts her about sneaking around with his phone and angrily takes it back from her. Desperate to get it back, Amy starts to undress and actually seems to be propositioning him for the phone, trying to seduce her own cousin. When he shoves her away from him, she swipes the phone, locks herself in the bathroom, and unbeknownst to him, takes a picture of her private parts to post online.
    • For most viewers, the ending dance garners this reaction due to the overly sexual poses and camera angles, making it come across as the film trying to make the viewer want to see the young girls dancing sexually.
  • Offending the Creator's Own: The movie has been accused, among other things, of being Islamophobic and of attacking Muslims, despite the fact that Maimouna Doucouré is the daughter of Muslim immigrants from Senegal, although she herself does not appear to be particularly religious.
  • Older Than They Think: The concept of underage actresses portraying sexualized fictional minors goes all the way back to the 1962 and 1997 movie adaptations of the (in)famous novel Lolita, which featured the actresses of the eponymous pedophile-targeted young girl at the ages of 14 and 16 respectively.
  • Overshadowed by Controversy: While it was released in its home country of France without much issue, the American release was tainted by a very misguided release poster, which featured the child actresses in sexualized poses with the implication that the film was not critical of this sexualization. The release of the film, which clarified that this imagery does not make up most of the movie, only led to more controversy over the depiction of children in the film. This led to a massive review-bombing campaign and even legal backlash insisting that Netflix pull the film. To this day, it's very difficult to talk about any other aspect of the film without first addressing the concerns of pedophilia apologism; in fact, some sites like the infamous 4chan actually ban any discussion of the film.
  • Spiritual Successor: It being an adult-oriented live-action movie about free-range preteen Dirty Kids coequals it as a gender-inverted version of Good Boys (the latter involves three sixth grade boys attempting to gain admission to a kissing party).
  • Squick:
    • Angelica spitting on her finger and dipping it in salt to heal Amy's forehead wound. Granted, she did it for a good cause, but seeing it out of nowhere makes the scene all the more squickish.
    • In one scene, the girls are caught by security guards for sneaking into a laser tag joint and they threaten to call their parents or the police. Amy steps in to say that they have a dance competition and they can't compete if they are arrested, but the guards don't buy it until Amy starts doing her provocative dance moves in front of them. One of the guards seems to be into it judging from the smile on his face.
  • Tainted by the Preview: Arguably, Netflix's infamously Misaimed Marketing promoting the film outside France ended up giving everybody the impression it was nothing more than a child exploitation film. Even Netflix's quick pivot on its marketing and the director maintaining the film is a criticism of child exploitation weren't enough to change the majority of the general audience's minds, if viewer reviews are any indication. The fact that many content creators who watched (or tried to watch) the film, such as Cr1TiKaL, stated that the movie was even worse than the original marketing suggested does not help.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Many views agree that the movie at its core has a nuanced message; the idea seemed to be that Amy was torn between being free to have her own life, or being stuck in a culture she found herself disagreeing with but one her family was involved with, addressing how children in modern society may do inappropriate things, facilitated by apps like TikTok, for the sake of approval and validation, or in the case of those who grew up in repressive or troubled households like Amy does, in defiance of their circumstances with which they may be unhappy. However, the movie seems to spend less time on this message and more time seemingly reveling in showing off these inappropriate behaviors with gratuity, with the resolution of Amy deciding she should be a normal western 11-year-old not getting enough development to warrant it.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic:
    • Amy's mother definitely has her flaws, but it's hard not to blame her for reacting the way she did when the school called to tell her that Amy had been fighting and dressing inappropriately. Even if she hit her, the scene simply portrays a mother furious at her daughter for acting too maturely for her age and any other parent out there cannot help but relate to her plight instead, on top of worrying about her husband's second marriage which she is still broken up about.
    • The film pretty clearly wants Yasmine to be seen negatively for her being the one who threatens Amy's position in the Cuties, but while Yasmine gets kicked out of the team for her own mistake earlier in the film, many found her to be this on account of Amy pushing her in the river, and Yasmine showing she cannot swim. If not for the nearby buoy, Yasmine could have drowned, making her look far less unsympathetic than the film wanted to show.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Amy is supposed to be seen as a tragic character caught between the lifestyle enforced at home, and the lifestyle she discovers while not at home. However, Amy's incredibly selfish and very nearly criminal actions in the film make it hard to find her at all likable. This includes her acting out at school, getting into a fight with a rival dance group, stabbing a boy with a compass for being smacked in the butt by him, and her causing a rift with her own dance crew for posting a picture of her genitalia. The tipping point comes when Amy pushes Yasmine into the river, nearly drowning her because Amy discovered that Yasmine cannot swim and was only able to save herself thanks to a buoy nearby. These actions made it difficult for audiences to sympathize with her from that point on, especially when at the end of the film, Amy ends up mostly getting away without too much trouble outside of her mother and her dance group being angry at her.
  • Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: Amy pronounces her name with a short A ("Ah-mi") rather than a long one. (Justified as it’s short for Aminata, a common name in Senegal.)
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Despite its innocent title and starring of young girl actors, the movie is intended for adult audiences, specifically those who criticize the age-inappropriate behavior of adolescent children in mainstream society through the likes of TikTok and similar social platforms. It features major up-close focus on the provocative dance moves and clothing of underage girls, pretty frequent Cluster F Bombs, a (off-screen) transmission of a child pornography image, and depictions of cultural abuse of a child to all prove that the movie isn't suitable for minors. Despite all this, Common Sense Media rates the movie with an age recommendation of 15+.note 

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