YMMV / Manchester by the Sea

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• Angst Aversion: This film is grim, and it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the way the characters deal with their tragedies and mourning. Even people who usually parody movies (like The Editing Room) pointed out how difficult this movie is to satirize.
• Award Snub:
  • The film's affecting score lost out on an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score because of a qualification technicality.
  • Though Viola Davis (winning Best Supporting Actress for Fences) is no undeserving Oscar winner, many fans of Michelle Williams were irritated that Davis was only in the category because of intentional Award Category Fraud, as the Best Supporting Actress category was considered less competitive than Best Actress, where Emma Stone was getting good traction for La La Land. Davis ended up sweeping the awards circuit, shutting out Williams, who was considered second-place in the race and would have easily vied for frontrunner status with Naomie Harris (for Moonlight (2016)) if not for Davis.
• Funny Moments: There are several, which is hardly a surprise as one of the film's main themes is managing to not lose a sense of humour in an extremely tragic situation.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The Chandler family's boat was, in real life, named after the little daughter of its owners, who died at 13 months in 2001, which seems like a cruel cosmic irony for it to be featured in a movie where the death of three kids, among them a baby is a plot point.
• Narm: Many reported that Matthew Broderick's appearance took them out of the film during his scenes at best, or making theaters burst into unintentional laughter at worst.
• Nightmare Fuel: How Lee's dilemma came to be. He lit a fire to warm the house up, inadvertently puts too many logs on the fire without knowing it, leaves the house to buy beer, comes back to find his decision resulted in the house burning down with his kids still asleep. Then he, upon confessing this to the police, tries to kill himself at the police station.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Casey Affleck's harassment accusations got brought up again when the "Me too" movement started up after his Oscar win, ultimately causing him to back out of the Oscar tradition of the acting winners being announced by the previous year's winner of the opposite gender, knowing full well how awkward it would be. Said tradition made things pretty awkward when he was getting his award, too, as the previous year's Best Actress winner, Brie Larson, made no secret of the fact that she did not think people should be giving awards to a man accused of sexual harassment and did not like being the one to do it.
• The Woobie:
  • Lee. Every expression he makes just radiates pain. His very abrasive nature and tendency towards starting fights makes him a Jerkass Woobie at many points though.
  • Randi. Despite the fact that Michelle Williams only gets a few minutes of screentime outside of flashbacks, she conveys an incredible amount of long-endured suffering in the scenes she has.
  • Patrick, especially during his breakdown at the freezer.
  • Though his onscreen role is very small, Lee's father especially at the police station witnessing Lee's Bungled Suicide which happened mere hours after his grandchildren died in a fire. The poor man lurches out of his seat in pain and shock. He clearly wants to do something, but is unable to intervene.

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