YMMV / The Pest

• Base-Breaking Character: Pestario himself. His deliberate obnoxiousness is either the movie's biggest charm or the sole reason you avoid it like the plague.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Voodoo Mambo, the first scene of the movie, is this. For some reason, does the protagonist like to wear as many disguises and offensive racial stereotypes as possible ... while taking a shower?
• Bile Fascination: Some people really want to see if the movie (and the protagonist) is really so annoying as they say.
• Critical Dissonance: Being the kind of movie that it is, it's never faired too well with critics, but audiences loved it enough for it to become a Cult Classic.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Pestario posing as a blind man as part of a scam? No, not funny. Pestario adding more and more disabilities to the act every time he gets punched? Funny.
  • Arguably, the whole movie. It's clearly trying to be annoying, and succeeds so much that it's hard to not be on board with it.
• Designated Hero: Pestario is an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist at best, regularly scamming innocent people, cheating on his girlfriend and selling out his friends, all while making offensive jokes about every race imaginable. If not for the fact that his antagonist is a literal man-hunting neo-Nazi, you wouldn't want to see him win and get rich in the end.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Joe Morton as Xantha's father, thanks to playing the role 100% straight as a guy who's increasingly horrified at the insanity around him.
• Ethnic Scrappy: Ironically, Pestario's Hispanic stereotypes are tame compared to the far more stereotypical Chinese, Scottish, Jewish and WASP characters he encounters, let alone does offensive impressions of. At least he's equal opportunity? The only good thing is at least he doesn't do Black Face. Though he does show up to meet his girlfriend's parents dressed in a dashiki, with an afro wig and bongos, using exaggerated ebonics throughout (referring to his girlfriend's mom as a "biyatch" at one point), which isn't all that different.
• Fair for Its Day: Himmel, being a gay character in a doofy 90s comedy, is depicted as weird and depraved. However, he's significantly less "rapey" than his counterparts, never forcing himself on Pestario, and in fact has the guts to passively tell his father that he isn't at all ashamed of who he is without resorting to positive discrimination.
• Memetic Mutation: "Voodoo Mambo", especially "ONE STINKY DINKY".
• Nightmare Fuel: The premise is played for comedy, but Gustav's trophy collection is not. Upon seeing it, even Pest has the sense to start freaking out.
• Rooting for the Empire: If Pest's deliberately annoying schtick doesn't charm you, you'll probably be begging Gustav, the psychotic Nazi man-hunter, to put a few bullets in him.
• Signature Scene: "Voodoo Mambo", which opens the film and tells the audience right away what kind of film they're in for.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: "Voodoo Mambo" is a sound-alike of the hip-hop classic "Rapper's Delight".
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Why the film has never been popular with critics. While it's clearly going for Black Comedy and pure dumb laughs, the main character is also an unscrupulous scam artist with no loyalty to his girlfriend or even his regular friends, and the only reason he's considered the hero is because the actual villain is a literal Nazi who likes to hunt and kill human beings while humiliating his homosexual son. Every other character is at their mercy.
• Values Dissonance: While the movie saves a tiny bit of face by at least having its Equal-Opportunity Offender be an actor of color whose many racial stereotype jokes also include white people, it's safe to say that a movie starring a person of any race would not get away with making those jokes if it were made today.

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