7 Beloved Movies That Would Be Problematic Today

4. She’s All That

Ah, the old rom-com cliché: for someone to even look at a perfectly attractive female, she needs to take off her glasses and don a skin-baring attire. Laney is a strong, independent teenager with uncommon viewpoints at the beginning of the film. We therefore ponder why she would give it all up to be the typical, unoriginal “attractive girl” when she is such a badass.

5. American Beauty

Outside of its aesthetic riskiness, this Kevin Spacey movie was a cult favorite, but in 2020, the sexualization of minors is simply intolerable. It centers on a whiny, entitled white man who eventually “falls in love” (i.e., acts predatorily toward a youngster) with his daughter’s best friend. This assumes a completely different meaning when you take into account the Hollywood accusations against Spacey.

6. Pulp Fiction

We can’t think of a Quentin Tarantino film that hasn’t caused some degree of controversy, but Pulp Fiction was the movie that started it all. A character played by Quentin Tarantino repeatedly uses the N-word to describe the dead body he and Samuel L. Jackson discover in the automobile. It’s troubling to consider that Tarantino may have cast himself specifically so he could get away with on-screen bigotry, but it’s also obvious that this is not acceptable for a white man to say on film. The PC police will get you, Quentin; you’re not untouchable.

7. Bring it On

Bring it On’s Gabrielle Union will always be a part of our hearts, but it’s great to see how much she’s grown as a person since the movie came out. This young flick from the 2000s was cutting edge at the time, but we all remember the pervasive homophobia that afflicted it. Sparky Polastry, played by a straight actor, is a blatant stereotype of homosexual people. In other sequences, a male cheerleader sexualizes, shames, and even inappropriately touches teenagers. he also uses harmful rhetoric concerning neurodiverse folks.