YMMV / Philadelphia

• Award Snub:
  • While Tom Hanks was able to pull off a very deserving Academy Award win for his performance as Andrew Beckett, Denzel Washington's work as Joe Miller was, sadly, largely ignored by voting bodies.
  • As beautiful as Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia" was, a segment of viewers felt that Neil Young deserved the Best Original Song Oscar even more. Springsteen references this in his acceptance speech, saying, "Neil, I gotta share this with you."
• Awesome Music:
  • Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia". In both the music video and the opening of the movie, Springsteen shows the city in all its aspects — both the bright, shiny downtown landmarks, and the poor areas — minority, homeless, urban blight, and decay. And he ties it all together with this song. Streets of Philadelphia, indeed.
  • "Philadelphia" by Neil Young. Doubles as a Tear Jerker.
    • Young and Springsteen were asked to write these songs to appeal to a "testosterone-fueled" male audience, Demme's idea of "mainstream appeal" — this was not just a film for or about gays. Demme asked for one of Young's roaring anthems about injustice, but Young sent a poetic hymn that had the production team crying. Demme said "Oh my God, Neil trusts this film more than I do." The song was changed very slightly for the film.^note here's the original if you want to hear it, as rendered by Richard Stolzman here's Neil playing a slightly more optimistic version It was nominated for an Oscar — but lost to Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia".
• Fair for Its Day:
  • Beckett is pretty much sanctified simply for having AIDS, but he's not too gay, two aspects of the story which were not lost on LGBTQ critics at the time who were still upset with Demme about the supposed Gay Panic subtext in The Silence of the Lambs, and saw this film as a flaccid apology. It's still regarded as a landmark in normalizing gay men in mainstream media.
  • Additionally, the criticism that Becket is not too gay should be blamed more on the executives who forced scenes of Andrew and Miguel being more intimate with each other to be cut. While that doesn't mean that the trope isn't present, it was clearly not the intention of the filmmakers to invoke it.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Ron Vawter, the actor who played Bob Seidman (Andy's only sympathetic colleague among the law firm partners) died of AIDS-related complications about a year after this movie was released, and was already in very poor health during filming.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Tom Hanks plays a character named Andy in this film. Two years later, he will play a character in another film whose owner is also named Andy.
• Tear Jerker:
  • When Andy and Joe talk about their case in private, Andy decides to play one of his favorite songs, and starts describing everything so vividly in a very somber moment. It's here that Joe realizes one thing, Andy knows he's going to die and that he doesn't have much time left. Joe returns home, kisses his infant daughter and goes to bed, possibly with a new found appreciation of his life, and a bit of sorrow as well.
  • The ending. In Andy's final scene, Joe helps him get his breathing mask back on and promises to see him tomorrow. As the rest of Andy's family and friends also file out and make the same promise, his brother ends up breaking down and sobbing into his chest until he and their mother try to reassure him. It's only after when Andy and Miguel are alone, that Andy let's his lover know that his time has come and he's ready to go.
• The Woobie: Andrew Beckett is a fundamentally decent man whose body becomes plagued with AIDS and is fired from his job as a result of this. He's then turned down by every lawyer he meets with on the issue, nearly forcing him to take on his own case before Joe Miller changes his mind. And while Beckett is able to win the case, his sickness never improves, continuing to ravage his body until it finally takes his life.

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