YMMV / Casino

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• Award Snub: Sharon Stone not winning the Best Actress Academy Award, though she was admittedly a long shot in the first place. Her nomination was the only one the film received.
• Ending Fatigue: The last third of the movie seems to involve a lot of padding.
• Even Better Sequel: To GoodFellas. A not uncommon opinion these days, though far from mainstream. Supporters feel that Casino is bolder, being somewhat Darker and Edgier and missing the Black Comedy and Comedic Sociopathy that makes the earlier film entertaining. Joe Pesci, rather than being a Satellite Character as a Psycho Party Member in GoodFellas, gets to share the spotlight on a more or less even footing with Robert De Niro, resulting in a better performance.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Ace Rothstein must have wanted to be a Batman villain when he grew up. It being Las Vegas in the 1970s, there's plenty more to go around. Scorsese even lamented "the aesthetic of bad taste" that he had to put up with thanks to the Vegas setting. As the son of garment workers, he's quite obsessive about good sense of fashion and suits.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Not that anyone ever doubted Joe Pesci's acting ability, but his performance here showed that when given an actual character and development, especially compared to Goodfellas, he is far more than just an F-bomb dispenser. Which is especially ironic as he gets a whopping 208 of the film's 438 F-bombs.
  • Before this movie, Sharon Stone was mainly known for uncrossing her legs in Basic Instinct. This film changed that—to the point of earning her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Following his death in October 2008, Frank Rosenthal (Ace Rothstein's real-life counterpart) was revealed to have been an FBI informant himself, along with his wife Geri (Ginger). They even had the same FBI handler, though neither were ever aware of this. This makes the film even funnier, as the mob bosses kill everyone including the ultra-loyal Andy Stone... but the actual rat is untouched because he can still make them money. In particular, Ginger's threat to go to the FBI and Ace's narration that she told them nothing after her arrest is particularly funny when one knows that Geri was doing just that all along.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: One of the points of criticism was that the film felt too similar to GoodFellas. It was mostly because of the cast and the commonality of styles (narrator, montage, use of rock music as accompaniment), because the actual setting was quite different from Goodfellas. This is more obvious when you consider that Goodfellas is "based on a true story", whereas Casino is "adapted from a true story," wherein all the characters have their names changed from the real life counterparts.
• Memetic Mutation: Much of Nicky's dialogue appears on Joe Pesci soundboards and creates for some hilarious results on prank calls posted on YouTube.
  • Dubbing Nicky and Ace's desert meeting over footage from unrelated works, such as Bert and Ernie.
  • "I want an equal amount of blueberries in each muffin" is also quite famous.
  • "Freak you. Freak you, Sam Rothstein. Freeeeaaak you."^note The TV version of Casino removes much of the profanity, resulting in scenes with awful ADR jobs—and keep in mind that this is a movie that ranks #6 on films that use the F-word the most. This scene has Ginger's Cluster F-Bomb towards Sam dubbed over with this line in the most apathetic tone possible.
  • The bowdlerized TV version of the movie is pretty memetic in general, especially this scene.
  • An Italian is forced to watch a pineapple put on pizza for the first time.^note An edited screenshot of Nicky being held down and forced to witness his brother's brutal beating.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Ginger ties her daughter to her bed after leaving her locked in their house. It's completely unprovoked and selfishly motivated.
  • Nicky may or may not have crossed it in his introductory scene, when he stabs and beats a guy to death because the latter insulted Ace. It's rather tricky because none of his other actions is anywhere as bad, and he's even shown to have standards later on.
    • Depending on if he's actually the guy that arranged for Ace's car bomb, it might be that.
• Narm: The moment where dour old Ace suddenly falls in love with Ginger (though his stony-faced expression belies this), the film freeze frames then goes into slow motion as the rather cheesy "Love is Strange" by Mickey & Sylvia plays.
• Narm Charm:
  • Amusement can be also be derived from some of squeaky New Joiseyan Joe Pesci's sweary bits ("You muddafucker, you!", "Peek-a-boo, you fucks, you!"), some of De Niro's trademark repetition ("Was I at that dinner? Was I at that dinner?"), one bit of classic James Woods shouting ("Why don't you do it yourself, ya chickenshit cocksucker!") and even some of the violence Crosses the Line Twice, particularly whenever Pesci hits people with phones ("What are you staring at, you bald headed Jew prick?")
  • The TV dubbing is narm for the most part considering this is one of the most Cluster F-Bomb-ridden movies ever made, meaning having to hear a bunch of hardened gangsters sound mildly impolite, but one moment that particularly stands out is Nicky calling Ace a "Jew motherfucker" being replaced with "Jew money-lover", which some viewers consider better than the original simply for sounding hilariously offensive compared to the original.
• Signature Scene:
  • For many, the first thing they think of is the brutal murders of Nicky and his brother.
  • Nicky and Ace's meeting in the desert.
  • There's also Nicky using a vise to torture Doggs to tell the truth about his senseless murder of bar patrons and a waitress.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • In the first scene, Robert De Niro conspicuously transforms into a mannequin wearing the same suit right before his car explodes.
  • In the cornfield scene, the bats used on the victims can be seen bending on impact to give away they're made of rubber.
• Squick:
  • The head in the vise scene. In-universe, even a hardened killer like Frank has to turn away.
  • Nicky and his brother being beaten to death with bats is terrifyingly graphic.
• Tear Jerker: Despite the fact he deserved it, seeing Nicky sob about being forced to watch his little brother get beaten to death is pretty heartbreaking.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Philip Green is a Satellite Character whose only purpose is to react to the latest mob murder or negative publicity from Ace's antics. The real life basis for Green, Allen Glick, had a rivalry with Lefty Rosenthal, insisting that as the legal owner of the casinos on paper, he should be in charge instead of simply being a powerless figurehead (nobody treated him as having any authority). He backed off after he was threatened with his life.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: For some people, none of the main characters are remotely likeable, there's little humor and the violence is even more extreme than in Goodfellas. Judging from reviews, these differences account for its mixed reputation as much as its similarities to the earlier film.
• Unintentional Period Piece: In the end, Ace laments that Vegas has become more like a family amusement park, pointing to then-new casinos like Excalibur and Treasure Island. Since that time, Vegas has pulled back on its attempts to be kid friendly, and these casinos have rebranded themselves to feel more hip and adult.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The scene with the blueberry muffins is laughably bad. It's trying to highlight that Ace is a Control Freak, but it backfires because as many competent chefs have pointed out, it's not hard to get an equal amount of blueberries in each muffin if you bother to do your job and mix the batter. The chef complaining that would take forever, is talking nonsense. You feel instead sympathy for Ace that he's Surrounded by Idiots. This shit would never fly in the kitchen with the likes of Gordon Ramsay.
• Vindicated by History: While praised for its performances, the film was seen as too much of a retread of Goodfellas during its theatrical release, but it's been better appreciated for its own merits as time goes by.
• The Woobie:
  • When Ginger has her Villainous Breakdown towards the end and has a very loud public freak-out on the steps of the house, Amy is watching from a neighbor's house as the whole street looks upon the self-destruction of her mom. And the night before, her mom tied her to the bed just so she could go out to the Leaning Tower and have a drink. That poor kid is going to need to spend a lot of time in a psychiatric hospital.
  • Stoic Woobie: Billy Sherbert, Played Against Type by caustic comedian Don Rickles. There's very little indication that he has much involvement with the criminal activities beyond working as the apparent manager of the casino and generally doesn't do anything bad. He doesn't complain, but he still has to take a lot of abuse from Nicky and gets sucked into the insanity of the Ace/Ginger/Nicky situation.

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