YMMV / Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

• Adaptation Displacement: The book was a bestseller when first published but quietly faded in popularity, while the film started off strong and remained so. These days people might not even realise there was a book.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • When Evelyn and Ninny discover at the end that Idgie's still alive in the present day, Ninny gives Evelyn a smile. Does Ninny know where Idgie is, or is Ninny actually Idgie herself?
• Broken Base: The book or the movie. Fans of one tend to not like the other.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The secret's in the sauce! The director was worried it might come off as a dark What the Hell, Hero? moment, but the audience in the test screenings thought it was hilarious.
• Designated Villain: Not a villain per se, but Evelyn's husband is portrayed in a very negative way. Throughout the movie, the audience never sees nor hears of him doing anything bad to her or anyone else. He's not very exciting and clearly has interests that don't involve her, but he doesn't try to suppress her new-found spirit either. When it is inconvenient for him, he gets annoyed, but never says anything mean or regrettable. The only time he ever draws the line is when she wants to move Ninny in with them—something he only finds out about when he discovers Evelyn preparing a room for her. He attempts to reason that Ninny is both very old and not even family. Since Evelyn has only known Ninny for a short time, has only visited her in a facility where she receives 24/7 care, and that despite her age, Ninny is otherwise in good health and could live for several more years (not to mention the inevitable issues that will arise when they must make end-of-life decisions for a non-related adult living under their roof), Ed definitely has a point.
  • Ed's chief "villainy" is not that he does anything bad to Evelyn, or that he tries to prevent her from doing what she wants. It's more that he seems blind to his wife's growing unhappiness. In fairness to Ed, Evelyn believes that she is at fault and doesn't express her concerns to Ed until she's well past despair (the film plays this for laughs while the novel shows her frequently fantasizing about suicide), but once she does so, Ed seems responsive to the idea.
    • There's also a little difference in the film (where Evelyn's personal growth is the main focus) and the novel (where we have a little more time to see how their marriage is going). By the end of the film, Ed's just warming up to his wife's new ideas; in the book, he comes around a little earlier and the book ends with indications that their relationship is in the midst of a happy upswing. Plus, there's something to be said about a man who visits his belligerent elderly aunt in a nursing home every week, even when he knows she's just going to throw things at him.
• Fridge Brilliance: "You gotta get up early in the morning to put one over on Curtis Smoote." Big George was up literally all night.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the film, the judge dismisses the charges against Big George and Idgie, declaring that it's more likely Frank Bennett got drunk, drove into the river, and was "long-since eaten up". Well, he got one part right.
• Promoted to Love Interest: In the film, Grady has a bit of a crush on Idgie, to the point that he's apparently asked her to marry him a couple times (though in fairness, he clowns it up a lot, meaning it might be an old gag between them). It's still an upgrade from the book, where none of Idgie's male friends, including Grady, ever regard her as anything but one of the boys.
• Tear Jerker: Oh, so many different examples:
  • "Just let her go. Miss Ruth was a lady, and a lady always knows when to leave."
    • The entire scene from that start could probably qualify including Buddy Jr and the lake story.
  • Smokey's reminiscing about Ruth, before he freezes to death.
  • In the novel, George's two twin sons find themselves reminiscing at the ends of their lives: Artis remembers his youth as a popular ladies' man in a vibrant, exciting, black-centered Birmingham, while Jasper looks back on the hardships of a life spent in deference to white people, reflecting that the one thing that sustained him was his love for trains. Both the Birmingham of Artis's youth and the time of trains has long passed; both old men can find comfort only in their memories.
  • Ninny just sitting there alone at the site where her home was condemned, which was lived in by her & her husband for 40 years, and with nobody to live for and nowhere to go.
  • Oddly (or perhaps not, all things considered), that final shot of the Whistle Stop Cafe, dilapidated and weathered and abandoned, with the whole town gone. It just seemed to encapsulate everything Idgie lost: everything we loved about her town.
• The Woobie: Buddy is such a loving, and charming young man, who tragically is hit by a train right in front of his beloved little sister!
  • Idgie, who loses her beloved older brother Buddy, and later her best friend Ruth (or lover, depending on the adaptation).
  • Ruth, another kind and loving person, who first tragically loses her boyfriend (in the movie adaptation), is physically and emotionally abused by her husband, and later dies of cancer.

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