YMMV / Miracle Mile

• Audience-Alienating Ending: The film could be the textbook example of Shoot the Shaggy Dog. Not only was Chip telling the truth, meaning a global-scale nuclear holocaust is imminent, but everything Harry does throughout the story was for naught (save for presumably indirectly saving a few minor characters) and gets him and Julie killed. Upon the original run in theaters, this killed the movie dead in the box office.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: The mix of rom-com with apocalypse didn't really suit anyone back in the day. And after the initial weekend, which wasn't so bad, the knowledge about an extreme case of Downer Ending killed off any audience the film could still get.
• Awesome Music: The score by Tangerine Dream, particularly the haunting end credits theme.
• Cult Classic: The film performed miserably at the box office, but was well reviewed, and subsequently developed a following.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The other diner residents (particularly Landa and Fred the Cook) have maybe three scenes, but are almost universally well-remembered by fans.
  • Wilson is considered decently acted, and has a good Hero of Another Story vibe.
  • The Manly Gay helicopter pilot who tries to come back for Harry and Julie at the end makes a good impression.
• Fair for Its Day: The film is surprisingly progressive in its treatment of LGBT characters, especially for 1988. Roger the transvestite displays no stereotypical mannerisms whatsoever. You'd expect her to be Camp Gay, but she spends most of her screen time giving a traveller directions and suggesting that Chip was a prank caller. The powerlifting helicopter pilot is a tough, honorable Manly Gay who is unashamed of his sexuality.
• Harsher in Hindsight: LA devolving into violent grid-locked chaos thanks to nuclear panic seems oddly prescient of the 1991 Rodney King riots that would occur three years later.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: While Harry and Julie weren't able to get their happy ending in-universe, their actors (Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham) eventually married in 2021.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Los Angeles becomes a complete hellhole roughly an hour after Harry receives the phone call. Looting, rioting, several car accidents, murder, public sex, and lawlessness in general plague the streets as hundreds of thousands of people panic at the idea that Armageddon could be underway. Harry is understandably horrified to know that the city has delved into chaos all because of a phone call that may or may not have been authentic.
  • The phone call itself is quite chilling, as Chip is gunned down after trying to warn his dad that nuclear war will occur within the hour, with the next person who picks up the phone telling Harry to forget what he's heard and go back to sleep. Harry isn't sure whether it's a prank call or not, and is visibly shaken up upon hearing it. It's real.
  • The fact that we know absolutely nothing about the nature of the nuclear war itself, such as what the causes of it are, who the US is fighting against, and why they feel the need to strike first. What's truly horrifying is that we never learn why the military is hellbent on keeping everyone and anyone who isn't with the government unaware of the imminent apocalypse, condemning them all to die an agonizing death.
• Periphery Demographic: A disproportionately large part of the fandom is made up of Tangerine Dream fans, as they've provided one of their better soundtracks to the film.
• Retroactive Recognition: Chip, the kid calling his dad on the phone? That's Kaiden Alenko!
• Tear Jerker:
  • Harry and Julie fail to escape Los Angeles in time, dying as their helicopter sinks into the La Brea Tar Pits and is directly hit by a missle. The music that plays over the end credits really highlights the tragedy of the whole thing.
  • Wilson, the stereo thief, cradling his mortally wounded sister in his arms and watching as she dies, sobbing and begging Harry to kill him before he succumbs to his own injuries.
  • Chip, the man on the phone, tries to warn his father about the upcoming nuclear apocalypse, only to realize that he dialed the wrong number and frantically tries to get Harry to call his father and apologize for something before being gunned down.

• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Wilson's sister Carlotta is played by the talented Kelly Jo Minter and is implied to be an anti-nuclear Soapbox Sadie who spends half of the film having the same kind of chaotic adventures with her brother that Harry and Julie are having. She feels like she could have been an interesting part of the last act, but only gets a cameo appearance with a single line of dialogue.
  • Chip's father, who has unexplained issues with his son, is the impetus of the whole plot, and could have provided a look at the panic spreading to other cities, is nonetheless only present for one short phone call where Harry fails to warn him about the incoming nukes before he hangs up.
  • The busboy who believes Harry's warning but then steals his car to fetch his mother (according to a Bilingual Bonus conversation) and his mother never shows up again, when their own flight from the city likely had an interesting story behind it and his stealing Harry's car could have led to some interesting interactions on both sides if they met up again.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The film was already showing its age when it hit theaters in the summer of 1989, in large part thanks to the script being written almost a decade earlier and then languishing as "unfilmable" for many years. Thus the idea of nuclear war breaking out had become much more remote given that the Soviet Union was now under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev and both countries had ratified the INF Treaty to significantly reduce their respective nuclear stockpiles. Relations between both countries had thawed significantly enough that US President George H. W. Bush and Gorbachev jointly declared the Cold War "over" later that year. This could have been a possible factor as to why Miracle Mile failed at the box office, it was simply unable to garner public interest given the way the pages of history were turning at the time.
    • Strictly speaking, it's not specified who the US goes to nuclear war with, though the assumption in 1989 would have been the USSR. The only mention of the possible enemy is when Harlan says he would only believe a "Russkie" first strike. While it's still dated because the scenario is considered much less likely after the end of the Cold War, the US and Russia could still go through this today.
  • The May Company Building is featured prominently in a few shots, with its glowing "MAYCO" signage. Six years after the film debuted, the building became LACMA West and is now the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
  • Similarly, the Ohrbach's department store (which Wilson crashes into) across the street from the May Company Building is now repurposed as the Petersen Automotive Museum.
  • A payphone call is the inciting incident of the plot, while today you'd be hard pressed to find one anywhere.
  • Landa's brick-sized cell phone is noticeable. The characters call it a mobile phone, whereas Americans typically call them "cell phones" today.
  • Harry laments about wishing he hadn't been there to answer the phone and missing his date due to using an electric alarm clock and the hotel he is staying in losing power while he slept. Seeing cellphones nowadays have their own alarm clocks and run off their own battery, Harry would have waken up on time for his date and missed out on the phone call (but as mentioned above, finding a payphone nowadays would be hard pressed to find).

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