Ironically I enjoyed everything but the Music.

I thought all the actors were brilliant, Maddie Ziegler was the standout and proved she can hold it down with the best of them.

About the controversy:
As far as the holding and calming down being controversial I say to each their own. The actors were playing the part of people that had little to 0 knowledge of how to deal with Autism. Zu was an alcoholic that was double her sisters age but has the emotional growth of an 8 year old. If you are portraying someone this way they are going to be messed up and not do everything perfect. The problem with society today is that children & young adults are outraged about everything. People want to rewrite history in films, take out everyones imperfections and make everything hunkeydory. That's just unrealistic & stupid.
I had a 80 something year old Uncle and he was racist against black people, he was wonderful otherwise but do you think at his age you he was going to stop being racist?The man had 80 years of living on me, who am I to tell him how to act. He would do it on his own if he felt the need. I did however tell him to please keep the foul language and raw commentary to himeself when I was around and out of respect I would filter my comments and storytelling for him. Excpecting everything & everyone to be the same is unreasonable . But God gave you freedom to do what you want so if you don't like aspects of this film then don't watch it again. Push the button & keep it movin.

As far as Sia's filmmaking chops go, she clearly has an artist's eye but not a storyteller's pen. Full of uninspired tropes and grossly predictable, 'Music' offers nothing new to cinema-goers, and even less for Sia and Maddie Ziegler fans. People are looking for a lot more to venture outside these days, and I'm sorry to say this isn't it.
- Jess Fenton

Read Jess' full article...
https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-music-sias-feature-debut-falls-flat

Music is a hard film to describe my feelings about. It sort of doesn't really have a good plot that you can describe straight up. If you even look at the description it starts with a story about Zu.

Millie and Music live together, with Music's routine the same every day. She is a non-verbal autistic young woman who has headphones to help with sensory processing. She goes for a walk every day outside in her neighbourhood - which I found quite unsettling as they let her go out by herself unsupervised practically, plus she doesn't have a care worker. One morning, the landlord comes to the apartment to find that Millie has died and Music is having a behaviour due to stress from a change in her routine. The movie is laced with musical numbers that are so bright and colourful and also really interesting (loved the costumes) but the lyrics are so on the nose, there is no deeper meaning. Lines such as "I hope my body listens to me today" or "Inside my head I express myself" were quite unpleasant for me to listen to, when describing a person with autism. I doubt that Sia did much research into the autism spectrum or how people with autism live.

The most jarring thing about the musical numbers is that once they end, the scene has completely changed and they represent a passage in time between two scenes! So you are dropped again into a completely different storyline. A lot of the side characters are given developmental arcs, but they are only to show how good they are, before they are cruelly deposed by the nonsensical story. I thought this movie would be about Music, but as the characters are developed, it actually turns into a love story between Zu and Ebo.

Zu's entire goal is to save money for Costa Rica and leave Music in a care facility. Her cruel and blase treatment of Music really puts Ebo off, but somehow he still seems to be falling for her. I felt disgusted by Zu and never really felt like she cared about Music. She's honestly really selfish and immature - Ebo even describes her as having dark girl vibes.

Particularly I want to mention how Music is used as a tool to prop up the neurotypical characters and improve them. Even at the end, [spoiler]Zu still tries to take her to care facility[/spoiler] and then says to Ebo after crashing his brother's wedding - "I couldn't give her away!" as if she was a possession.

Somewhere on the scale from barely acceptable to disgusting.