- Alternate Character Interpretation: Burt's mom doesn't like Benny and tells Burt he is in his house too much. She also criticizes Mitzi's easy way of doing the chores. She seems like a bitter old lady at first, but later it turns out Mitzi and Benny have an affair. How are the chances she picked up on it, like Sam did? And like Sam, she lost all respect for Mitzi and Benny, telling them not so subtly to spend their time on other things.
- Award Snub:
- Once again, Paul Dano misses out on an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
- It went a surprising 0 for 7 at the Oscars, joining previous Spielberg Oscar shutouts like The Color Purple (1985) and Empire of the Sun. The worst had to be John Williams getting snubbed again for Best Original Score against Volker Bertelmann for All Quiet on the Western Front.
- Catharsis Factor: Quite an amount of viewers may find it fulfilling when Mitzi's daughters call her out on her selfishness on having an affair with Benny.
- Crowning Moment of Awesome: Almost an Awesome Moment of Crowning, where Sammy gets to meet the larger-than-life John Ford. It's one of the greatest directors of a generation instructing someone who will become one of the greatest directors of the next generation, and an inspiring moment for anyone interested in the art of film-making.
- Fridge Brilliance: The casting of David Lynch as John Ford has a level of brilliance that those who aren’t aware of their backgrounds can miss. It’s not just the fact that Lynch looks a lot like Ford to be in the role, but the fact that both started off as painters before they got into making films. This makes the scene where Ford teaching Sammy about framing makes sense: painters would know about composition of a frame, and by using actual paintings, a painter who becomes a film director can explain the importance of framing a shot because they learned it from art of the past.
- He Really Can Act: While Seth Rogen plays a comic relief character in the film, his dramatic scene when he says goodbye to Sammy when he moves away from Arizona was praised as being moving.
- Memetic Mutation: The scene where Sammy meets his idol John Ford is one to many viewers, in that one of the Greatest Directors in Film History is being portrayed by another one of the Greatest Directors in Film History in a movie being directed by someone widely consider to be the Greatest Director in Film History. It’s essentially a Moment of Awesome, Moment of Funny, and a Moment of Mind-Screw all rolled into one.
- One-Scene Wonder: Judd Hirsch earned much praise for his single-scene cameo, to the point of being nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. David Lynch also received praise for playing John Ford.
- Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The movie dwells a lot on Mitzi's affair from her point of view, and the effect it has on her family, but neither the characters nor the film itself ever stops to consider the fact that the loveable Cool Uncle Benny is betraying his longtime friend and business partner by having a years-long affair.
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