YMMV / The Mule

• Best Known for the Fanservice: Thanks to John Mulaney and Pete Davidson, this movie is perhaps best known as the one in which 88 year old Clint Eastwood has two threesomes.
• Fridge Brilliance: When Earl pulls over to help the African-American family with their tire, he offends them by calling them "negroes". This might seem out of character for Earl given how friendly he normally is, but remember when he encountered the lesbian biker gang? They referred to themselves as "dykes on bikes". They probably gave him the impression that these slurs are acceptable again.
• Funny Moments:
  • Earl is unknowingly being taped by his handlers. Since he likes to sing along the radio playing old tunes, they at first just roll their eyes at what they hear, but ultimately can't help themselves and join the singing.
  • Those same handlers having to watch as Earl "entertains" two beautiful women at a motel stop during a run. The way it's shot makes Julio look jealous more than anything else.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Toby Keith's contribution to the film's soundtrack, "Don't Let the Old Man In", was inspired by his amazement that Clint Eastwood was still making movies at the age of 88. The song's title was the advice Eastwood gave on how he did it. Sadly, despite being three decades younger, Toby Keith was the one who passed away first; "Don't Let the Old Man In" was his final live performance, having become a poetic ode to his fight against stomach cancer.
• Narm: As Mary is exchanging her final words with Earl, it's supposed to be a very touching moment. But because she's also constantly grasping for air and shifts the speed in which she speaks between each breath, all combined with her squeeky voice, it makes the whole scene darkly hilarious instead. It might still be moving for some people by making the scene feel more realistic.
• Squick: While the scenes are Fanservice to some, others find the elderly Earl being engaged in two threesomes with woman significantly younger than him to be kind of gross.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: For some, Earl is not a great person and nothing in the movie is convincing enough to garner him more sympathy. The other parties being his family who seem to be less scorned and more just outright ungrateful, and ruthless cartel enforcers who are handling him. The only people to root for are the DEA agents and they're very underdeveloped.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • The movie really doesn't do enough to sell Earl's supposed neglect of his family, with them coming off more like expecting him to live entirely for their beck and call and not allowing him any kind of personal life.
  • For some, the movie really doesn't do enough to sell Earl as a sympathetic character. He skips his daughter's wedding for a flower convention, and other attempts at portraying him as a "silly old man" comes off as further showing him as an out-of-touch, self-centered and thoroughly racist man who is completely responsible for the position in life he finds himself in.

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