Cuties Movie Review & Synopsis

ADULT CONTENT

ADULT LANGUAGE

BARF BAG WARNING

SPOILERS

Like Solo, Cuties is another movie I had no interest in seeing. There’s a lot of controversy about it on Twitter, but I still had no interest. Then I saw this person say:

Given that I just gave a glowing review of Joker, I figured I had better watch this movie to see. I have now watched it and will cut straight to the point – Cuties is child porn made for girls to watch and then imitate and sexualize themselves and for pedophiles to jerk off to. It was clearly made to try to help normalize pedophilia. Here’s the entire movie so you don’t have to watch it:

The movie’s setup is as ham-fisted as it gets. Amy, our 11 year old protagonist, lives in the projects and is subject to the overbearing religion of her mother and her mother’s “Auntie” which calls for women to be covered up and always there for the direction of her husband. After this sermon, Amy and her mom are washing their hands and the mom says “Let the water run. It washes sins away.” It is then revealed that the husband is getting a second wife and the mom is sad.

Also, within the first couple minutes, Amy meets a girl in the laundry room who is dancing to Spanish music. This girl is wearing what can only be described as “fuck me pants.” Amy starts to get the sexualized dancing bug as a result of seeing this. She then meets three additional girls who would be called “sassy” today, but are really just a group of bullies. These girls are entering a dancing contest.

It’s easy to see why this film won awards because it checks all the right boxes off in the first ten minutes – there’s misandry and young girl power. The girls are well represented too – there’s a black girl, a white girl, a Spanish girl, and an overweight girl in addition to Amy, the black Muslim. There is not a more eastern Asian in the group, though.

Not long after that, the other girls sound as though they are watching a porn video (presumably of woman giving oral sex to a man) on a phone in the girls room. This phone is Amy’s, as she has stolen it from her dad (see edit at bottom) after he came home from banging his second wife to be. Among many other lines I didn’t get a chance to copy down, one of the girls says “What if he pees in her mouth?” Another says, “Look at the girl’s face!” Another says, “I bet its rape.” Another says “If it’s rape, it goes through your whole body and comes out your mouth.”

The girls then dare Amy to “take a picture of his thing.” They’re referring to a boy who they think is cute and is entering the boy’s room next door to take a wiz. Amy tries to record him but doesn’t get good video of his “thing.”

Amy and the Spanish girl then break into a room in the family’s apartment that the mom is keeping secret and it is revealed that it is a very nice room and is for the husband’s second wife. The two girls then play and frolic on the big bed.

Later, the group of girls show Amy a video of what I thought were adult women twerking and one flashes a breast at the end. It’s said that this is the “Sweetie Swag Bitches” dancing group (Sweetie Swags for short, and no, I am not making this up) and that they’re the favorites for the contest the 11 year old girls are entering. I was confused at this point because I didn’t know why an adult dancing group would be intermixed in a children’s dancing contest.

More cringe comes when Amy steals her little brother’s shirt and wears it as a crop top and the Spanish friend says “That crop top’s dope” and smacks her butt. Not long after that, Amy puts her gown over top of her head in a prayer session with the older women and starts watching outright booty porn on her dad’s phone.

Later, a group of older boys starts talking to the girls and Amy says they are 11 and the other girls get mad. The black girl in the group then finds a condom on the ground and starts playing with it by putting it her mouth among other things. This is when the movie starts to become one contrived sequence after another – the other girls are upset because they think she could have aids now and take her to a bathroom and soap her up (not naked – they soap up her face and mouth, but the implication of what is going on is clear).

Next up is an extremely contrived exit of the overweight girl from the group. The girls are on a laptop chatting with the boy they think is cute and chat about showing their breasts to him. He is embarrassed and the overweight girl turns the camera on for a second and he gets mad and calls them little girls. The other girls are mad at overweight girl, so Spanish girl fights her the next day at school.

This is the movie’s first act up until this point. Around the 40 minute mark is when it becomes very clear this is a child porn movie. It was obvious prior to this, but there was the possibility of an argument to be made that this is simply a “coming of age” story where girls are simply exploring their sexuality as they become women.

That argument becomes invalid when Amy takes overweight girl’s place and becomes the new leader of the group by going over dance moves she learned while watching the booty porn in prayer. There’s a booty montage of the girls twerking with plenty of up close crotch and booty shots and plenty of slaps of the girls butts for reasons unknown. This was very difficult to watch because it is clearly meant to be child porn.

There’s then more ham-fisted parenting drama where it is revealed that Spanish girl’s mom supposedly hates the girl because she’s bad. Or something. There’s then more activity with the phone, which is probably the movie’s biggest plot hole – why does the dad, who is a player and presumably in the need to make all sorts of booty calls, not notice that his phone is missing for weeks?

Amy then gets her first period and old Auntie starts laughing at her. At this point, I know I’m going to have to get a stiff drink to get through the rest, so I pause the movie. When I return, I come back to my rig I’m watching it on with my 4k monitor and my computer has shit itself. At first I thought the movie was so bad that even my computer couldn’t handle it, but then I got the feeling that the universe was allowing the alcohol to work into my veins while troubleshooting before watching the rest.

I get my computer working again and the girls break into some lastertag place or something and they get caught by security. While being held by the security guards, they get notified on the phone that they have made it to the dance finals and are cheering in joy. They then get out of this security situation by dancing for the guards sexually while one of the guards is an implied pedophile.

The movie then transitions to a scene where they’re all on steps of some sort to celebrate getting into the finals. When this scene, basically a child porn music video, started, I couldn’t watch it, even buzzed. This realization came when the music started and there was a zoom in close up of the white girl’s crotch as she has it spread eagle to the side. Fast forwarding, there were lots of close up crotch shots and booty shots visible.

Later at school, The Sweetie Swags are there talking to what appear to be high school boys. So, I guess the Sweetie Swags are high school girls? This begs the question, was the breast flash earlier actual child porn? I hope the actress was at least of age.

Amy then gets in a fight for some reason and the Sweetie Swags or someone near them pulls down her pants and reveals old children’s underwear on Amy in a close up shot of it. Everyone laughs at her for wearing underwear more for a child. They then go on a shopping spree and older girls’ panties and bras are thrown everywhere in the streets in this joyous occasion. I swear I’m not making this shit up.

Next up is what I consider to be the worst part of an already awful movie. The evil dad (see edit at bottom) finds that Amy has her phone and wants it back, so Amy locks herself in the bathroom, then takes a photo of her vagina, makes it public on social media then gives the phone back to dad. Fortunately, her vagina is not shown in the movie, although I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was flashed for a second either during that scene or later when people were talking about the photo. Frankly, I’m betting there’s a deleted scene where it was shown.

The next day at school, a boy slaps her butt and calls her a slut when she gets up in class to walk to the front of the room. This is because of the photo and everyone having seen her vagina. Amy stabs the boy in the hand with a pen nailing his hand to the desk without consequence. This scene was solely there to play to some sort of fantasy where a girl gets back at a bad boy for calling her a slut.

Then there’s a bizarre scene where Amy convulses and twerks for an extended period of time while wet in underwear because the mom is throwing holy water or something on her. I’m not sure what was going on here because I was near-drunk at this point, but I can say that the point of the scene was to be like a low rent child version of Jessica Beals’ flashdance scene with the water.

With about 15 minutes left in the movie is when the other girls say they’re “not strippers” to Amy and it’s basically stated that Amy has gone too far with her behavior. They kick Amy out of the group and bring back the overweight girl who is heard puking in the bathroom before rejoining the girls.

Next up is the dance finals. Since Amy is out of the group and the overweight girl is in her place, Amy sneaks away from her dad’s second wedding, changes into the dance outfit, then waits for overweight girl to walk by her by the river on her way to the finals. She jumps out and pushes overweight girl into the water watching her nearly drown and leaves before confirming she can get out of the water. She then dances at the finals. Some parents give a thumbs down to their routine. The judges seem ok with it. Amy realizes she should be back with her family, starts crying and runs off stage.

Amy is happy at the projects with her family that now includes a second wife for the dad. The End.

Notes in no particular order:

This is the worst movie I have ever seen. That isn’t hyperbole.
The argument that this movie is statement against the sexualization of young girls is a joke. The 1.5 hour movie openly celebrated pedophilia for 1 hour and 20 minutes. The ending of the movie is a statement against becoming obsessive about trying to fit into a particular group. The child porn was perfectly fine to the movie. People like Jack Saint on Twitter are providing cover for pedophiles.
Lost in some of the arguments I saw on my brief perusal of twitter on the subject is the fact that the girls in this movie were clearly exploited. I feel awful for them. Their lives are just beginning and they may very well be ruined, not only because of being exploited but also because of the fierce backlash this movie has produced and the fact that some douchebags will likely bring out their anger on the girls.
It’s going to be and odd feeling for pedophiles getting out of PMITA prison now after having served their sentence for looking at child porn and finding child porn readily available on Netflix.
Joker is a movie about mental illness made by a great director, writers, and actors. Cuties is a contrived movie made by mentally ill directors and writers exploiting young girls. There is no comparison between the two.
Given I don’t drink that much and required alcohol to get through the movie, I’m curious what a professional drinker’s take is on this movie, like The Critical Drinker.
In my brief perusal of Twitter, there appears to be lots of people cancelling their Netflix subscriptions. I’m considering doing this too. I’ll discuss it with my wife – we’ve been watching less and less Netflix lately. I won’t cancel it before watching Cobra Kai, though. That looks dope.

Grade: F-

Edit 09/14/20 – Uhhhh…some videos and articles state that the man I thought was her dad is a cousin of hers. This makes a lot more sense. I didn’t know who this man was and assumed it was her dad since he setup the dad’s room and had the dad’s belongings. This makes the phone plot hole a little smaller, but it makes something else much, much worse. Prior to taking his phone into the bathroom with her and taking a picture of her vagina, she tries to seduce the cousin by slowly undressing to a skimpy outfit. This didn’t make my synopsis because I didn’t know exactly what was going on here (I was also into the alcohol at this point) and there were already so many other sexual things noted.