The Automat is a halcyon, loving remembrance of not just the rise and fall of a defunct restaurant chain, but a reflection and meditation on the shiny chrome, turny knobs, coin-operated simplicity and small miracles of youth that filled us with magic and unlimited possibility.
This is not a transformative documentary. You won't leave it feeling uplifted or with profound new insights. It's a look back and an honoring. Underpinning the interviews and personal stories, there's a melancholy awareness these palaces, still dear in our memories, are not only gone or unrecognizable, but with them, the zenith of a sacred soul of an age it's hard to imagine could exist today. And yet, the Automat was such an institution in its day, such an indelible fixture of city life, it must have seemed as permanent and inevitable as the subway and taxi cabs. Who could even imagine a New York City without it?
A documentary such as this, with its narrow subject matter, is in danger of running out of things to say. While it's occasionally thin-feeling, the photos and film snippets inside the restaurants and through various eras of city life are voluminous and always provide something of interest. The interviews with Mel Brooks, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Colin Powell and many of the former employees of Horn and Hardart never let it drift into tedium or repetition, but occasionally feel rushed or "on the spot" as opposed to planned. Media is never cheaply reused and, just as importantly, it all feels authentic and heartfelt, never going for cheap nostalgia, lazy sound bytes or contrived emotional tugs. Never cloying at us with an over-sentimentalized score. The song sung by Mel Brooks during the credits is syrupy, but the film mostly earns that right by the end. And yet, because it mostly eschews such gimmicks, it affects all the more.
This is not a transformative documentary. You won't leave it feeling uplifted or with profound new insights. It's a look back and an honoring. Underpinning the interviews and personal stories, there's a melancholy awareness these palaces, still dear in our memories, are not only gone or unrecognizable, but with them, the zenith of a sacred soul of an age it's hard to imagine could exist today. And yet, the Automat was such an institution in its day, such an indelible fixture of city life, it must have seemed as permanent and inevitable as the subway and taxi cabs. Who could even imagine a New York City without it?
A documentary such as this, with its narrow subject matter, is in danger of running out of things to say. While it's occasionally thin-feeling, the photos and film snippets inside the restaurants and through various eras of city life are voluminous and always provide something of interest. The interviews with Mel Brooks, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Colin Powell and many of the former employees of Horn and Hardart never let it drift into tedium or repetition, but occasionally feel rushed or "on the spot" as opposed to planned. Media is never cheaply reused and, just as importantly, it all feels authentic and heartfelt, never going for cheap nostalgia, lazy sound bytes or contrived emotional tugs. Never cloying at us with an over-sentimentalized score. The song sung by Mel Brooks during the credits is syrupy, but the film mostly earns that right by the end. And yet, because it mostly eschews such gimmicks, it affects all the more.