They depend largely on how old you are, I find. The man is a subtle genius, an auteur, a talented and crafty individual who's in on the joke... or he's a wide-eyed, bee-screaming lunatic that's most memorable for flip-out compilations on YouTube.
I like them both. I don't think it's that modern audiences (cue my shaking a cane at the screen) necessarily don't give him credit, I think it's more that they just don't see some of those classic turns on the screen.
This thought brought to by seeing a clip of Raising Arizona pass me by on YouTube and going, "Oh... hell yeah."
