Bagdad Cafe

PG

Released Apr 22, 1988

1h 32m

Comedy

List

81%

21 Reviews

Tomatometer

88%

5,000+ Ratings

Audience Score

German tourist Jasmin Munchgstettner (Marianne Sägebrecht) argues with her husband after car trouble strands them along a dusty highway in the American Southwest. Fuming, she storms off and travels by foot to the nearest outpost of civilization -- the Bagdad Café. Upon arriving, she butts heads with the owner (CCH Pounder), but they soon forge an unlikely friendship. What begins as a few days' respite becomes a prolonged stay as Jasmine finds her niche within this eccentric truck-stop community.

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BJ M

One of my favorite films - sweet, original, touching ... with a beautiful musical score.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

02/27/24

Full Review

Alejandro E

Perhaps a defect of this film is its slow development, but it is compensated step by step with endearing characters and comic sequences, which leave a quite delicious and memorable ending.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

04/01/23

Full Review

douglas p

Bagdad Cafe, My Wife, and I cannot get enough of this movie. We have watched it maybe 6 or 7 times. We even made a pilgrimage to the Cafe, which was closed Summer 2022. The filming site is actually Newberry Springs, CA on route 66. Low-budget movies can be great and this is one of them.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Santiago P

One of my favorites. A true oddball of a movie, you find yourself aghast and enamored of each of the characters in turn. Some of the scenes between Brenda and Jasmine are cinema gold.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

11/26/22

Full Review

dave s

Bagdad Café's opening scene, filled with odd camera angles and jarring editing and horrible overacting, is either a stylistic nightmare or pretentious babble. Thankfully, things settle down (at least in relative terms) over the remainder of the film. It tells the story of a German tourist who, in the middle of a California desert, leaves her husband and makes her way on foot to the nearest outpost, the remote Bagdad Café, a ratty oasis in the middle of nowhere where the outcasts of society seem to congregate. The story of wildly disparate characters finding comfort in the company of others is heartwarming at times, but there is just too much stylistic quirkiness that takes away from the story and the development of the characters to give it any kind of strong recommendation.

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

03/30/23

Full Review

Audience Member

I remembered seeing this film years ago when it first came out. I couldn't remember much about it, just that it was interesting and unusual. I discovered that my library had a copy, so I checked it out and watched it again. It's a very quirky movie with an odd assortment of characters, and certain issues never get resolved. Yet it was worth watching. Glad I looked it up again.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

02/14/23

Full Review

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Percy Adlon

Director

Marianne Sägebrecht

Jasmin Münchgstettner

CCH Pounder

Brenda

Jack Palance

Rudi Cox

Christine Kaufmann

Debby

Monica Calhoun

Phyllis

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Jonathan Rosenbaum

Chicago Reader

Unfortunately, the film's curious conceits remain implausible even on a fantasy level, and most of the satirical possibilities are either sidestepped or fumbled.

Feb 8, 2010

Full Review

Nell Minow

Movie Mom

Rated: 4/5

Oct 27, 2005

Full Review

Roger Ebert

Chicago Sun-Times

The charm of Bagdad Cafe is that every character and every moment is unanticipated, obscurely motivated, of uncertain meaning and vibrating with life.

Rated: 3.5/4

Jan 1, 2000

Full Review

Terry Francis

Southern Voice (Atlanta)

Adlon here appears concerned less with the souls of his characters than with treating them as sentimental objects in some sort of metaphorical sideshow.

May 8, 2023

Full Review

Kathi Maio

Sojourner

With the kindliest of intentions, [Percy Adlon] has parroted the racist stereotypes of the American-made culture that informed his attitudes.

Aug 29, 2019

Full Review

Rob Aldam

Backseat Mafia

Bagdad Café is an uplifting and distinctly humane culture-clash comedy which will thaw the coldest heart.

Oct 30, 2018

Full Review

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Synopsis

German tourist Jasmin Munchgstettner (Marianne Sägebrecht) argues with her husband after car trouble strands them along a dusty highway in the American Southwest. Fuming, she storms off and travels by foot to the nearest outpost of civilization -- the Bagdad Café. Upon arriving, she butts heads with the owner (CCH Pounder), but they soon forge an unlikely friendship. What begins as a few days' respite becomes a prolonged stay as Jasmine finds her niche within this eccentric truck-stop community.

Director: Percy Adlon
Producer: Dietrich von Watzdorf
Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Production Co: Hessischer Rundfunk, Pelemele Film, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Pro-ject Filmproduktion [de]
Rating: PG
Genre: Comedy
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Apr 22, 1988, Original
Release Date (Streaming): Nov 1, 2016
Box Office (Gross USA): $17.9K
Runtime: 1h 32m

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