Thoughts on Bagdad Cafe

 On Hulu in August 2021, I watched Bagdad Cafe, a 1988 movie starring CCH Pounder and Marianne Sagebrecht, in which Sagebrecht plays a Bavarian woman who gets abandoned by her husband in the Nevada desert, and she ends up at a roadside motel/diner/gas station, run by CCH Pounder, and ends up befriending Pounder’s family as this quiet oddball woman who has an endearing charm, and Pounder is more assertive and stressed and trying to keep her family from mucking up her business, as well as being skeptical of this random woman who just seems weird and off-putting to her. They eventually become friends, and I liked how they had this unusual chemistry together with each other, especially since both got abandoned by their husbands very recently and are largely fending for themselves.

I had seen it once before, but didn’t remember it too well. I still really liked it, though Jack Palance really creeped me out. He’s supposed to play a local who is an artist and takes a romantic shine to Sagebrecht, but I just found him gross and unsettling, and wanted him out of the movie. IMDB trivia stated that he refused to do a romantic scene with her because he found her unattractive, likely because she was a middle-aged heavyset woman, so their romantic scene (he paints her while she chooses to disrobe slowly) was shot with them separately and not in the same shots together. Again, Palance was creepy and Sagebrecht was cute.

I liked that Pounder just owned this movie, as a woman just trying to keep her family together and being frustrated a lot, but still having heart and having more relatable quieter moments. I liked her family dynamics and their chemistry together. The desert setting also made me think of Tremors, and I could easily see this movie taking a weird turn into Tremors in the second half.

I’m not surprised this movie also led to being a short-lived sitcom with Whoopi Goldberg and Jean Stapleton, I could see someone thinking it would be a good sitcom idea then petering out of ideas within the first season.