Most people think of cuties as the brand of delightfully small oranges or some adorable little kids walking by. However, Cuties (released by Netflix on September 9) is anything but delightful and adorable. The film takes place in a very poor town in Paris and features an eleven-year-old girl who had just moved from Senegal, a small country in Western Africa. As young Amy struggles to make new friends and to start her life over in Paris, despite dealing with bullying, the ways of social media influencing a child’s life, beliefs, making bad decisions, dealing with different ethnicities, social class, and more. Although there were a few laughs throughout the movie due to little kids and how truly funny they can be the film overall was hard to watch. 

When people think of eleven-year-old girls, they think that they’re super innocent and have nothing to worry about. Amy was just that. Despite the bullying that she was put through and the way she was raised by her family, she was innocent. That is until she saw and slowly became friends with girls who were dancers and found videos online of older women exposing themselves in ways that eleven-year-olds should never do. The movie was based around a dance competition being held that a group of girls wanted to get into. At first, Amy was just a videographer for the girls but her curiosity got the best of her, leading her to steal somebody’s phone and secretly learn how to dance. Through that stolen phone Amy became more active in the social media world and got to explore the internet as society does today. 

Through deception, lying, and stealing Amy was able to portray an image of herself that made it so that society would accept her. Despite her values and troubles at home. The film was confusing with different scenes appearing and going and what felt like no storyline whatsoever. The only thing that I was really able to get from it is that social media is a terrible thing and that for young kids it’s something that should not be allowed. Being on social media for anyone is hard enough because of what a person sees each day while scrolling through it. For an eleven-year-old girl, it just gives her another reason to change who she is and to start living a life based on the number of likes and comments she gets rather than staying innocent and staying true to herself.

With mixed reviews, the movie is a difficult movie to talk about and to review. Some people think it should be seen, other people think that it should be hidden, it’s hard to say. I personally did not like the movie whatsoever. I wouldn’t recommend it because you’re basically watching a movie about how growing up is hard enough and how for an eleven-year-old girl the pressure of the world can be hard enough. Letting the pressure of the world cave in changes a person and makes them someone there not. I couldn’t watch the whole movie, some parts I was just too horrified to watch. There are eleven-year-old girls dancing in a way that makes them look unattractive even though they think it makes them look more appealing.