YMMV / All Too Well

• Alternate Aesop Interpretation:
  • One could interpret the moral about the importance of healthy communication in relationships, especially in the 10-minute version. In the short film, the argument in the kitchen has the girl acting passive aggressive and not being open about her feelings until she's confronted about them - after which the boyfriend starts attacking and Gaslighting her. The narration implies that the boyfriend might have grown to regret how he treated her, suggesting that if he had realised the communication problem (as the older partner) then the relationship could have been salvaged.
  • There's a lot of aesops the ex could learn, but an alternate one is 'don't date someone several years your senior and then blame them for not being as mature as you'. The dinner scene hammers this home - the narrator naturally struggles to relate to and get along with his friends who are also older than her, but he makes no real effort to include her in the conversation and snaps at her for being quiet afterwards.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • One of the first lines mentions the ex's "sweet disposition," but the 10-minute version and especially the short film shows him to be capable of being very nasty to the narrator, even before they broke up. However, the final reel of the film implies he regrets it at least a little bit. So was his sweet disposition real, with him being nice when he's in a good mood, but this being undercut by him having a Hair-Trigger Temper? Or was he simply playing at being nice to hide his intentions, and the mask fell away once the narrator got comfortable?
  • The song leaves it open whether the boyfriend ignored the narrator's birthday when they were still together or after they were broken up. The video however depicts it as happening after the break-up, with the narrator in seeming good spirits and surrounded by friends; suggesting that the real sadness of the moment is not the ex not turning up, but the narrator regretting that she was expecting him to and couldn't even enjoy her birthday because she couldn't stop thinking about him.
• Epileptic Trees: Who's the actress who comforted Taylor? Jennifer Aniston and Anne Hathaway are popular guesses. Some have also suggested Dianna Agron, since she and Taylor were known to have been friends around the time the album would've been being written.
• Jerkass Woobie: The most charitable interpretation of the boyfriend turns him into this, albeit with a heavy emphasis on the "jerkass" part. If you believe he genuinely loved the narrator at one point and his original niceness was real, he comes off as a deeply, deeply flawed person who has genuine remorse about hurting her, but is either too proud to apologize, or knows it's just too late for that. Dylan O'Brien summed up his feelings about the character pretty succinctly when he declared, "Fuck that guy!", but also plays him with moments of sadness and regret that seem sincere, especially when he's shown walking alone in the street after the breakup. None of this excuses his actions, but he still comes off as oddly pitiable in that moment.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "All The Too Short Well Film"
  • Reactors to the short film and 10 minute version often quip that they're "all too unwell" because of it.
• One-Scene Wonder: "Him 13 years later" simply by being played by an actor named Jake Lyons despite having only 1 second of screentime and not showing his face.
• She Really Can Act:
  • As this was released right before Stranger Things gave Max more screen time, Sadie Sink got rave reviews for how she went against type as a naïve and more fragile character than her usual Tomboy roles (although Fear Street fans knew she was capable of those heights).
  • A variation for Taylor Swift herself, although she did act in the video, she won lots of acclaim for her direction of it, with plenty saying she has a future in that area as well.
• Win Back the Crowd: Taylor Swift won lots of praise and acclaim not only for the ten minute version of the song, but also for her direction of the music video/short film.
• The Woobie: The narrator was always this, the entire song describing her heartache and regret after losing a relationship that clearly meant a great deal to her, but the short film elevates it to a whole new level. Sadie Sink captures the vulnerability and emotional fragility of a (very) young woman who got her heart crushed by someone she realized too late never treated her well, and the Distant Finale shows she's still hurt over it, even though she's moved on.