The Automat

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2:10

The Automat

2022

1h 59m

Documentary

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Tomatometer

Popcornmeter

98%

Tomatometer

55 Reviews

86%

Popcornmeter

Fewer than 50 Verified Ratings

Before fast food we had something better. Our grandparents told us stories of gathering around communal tables, sharing their lives, their struggles, and their dreams with strangers at The Automat. In the long awaited Horn & Hardart documentary relive the phenomena of America's original and most beloved restaurant chain. The one hundred year Automat saga serves up never before-seen archival footage and photographs and a cast including celebrity customers, company executives, historians, and members of the Horn & Hardart families.

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Critics Consensus

A wistful ode to a bygone era, The Automat will make viewers nostalgic for America's past -- and hungry for a meal at the titular diner.

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Ty Burr

Ty Burr's Watch List (Substack)

May 13, 2022

3/4

Short and sweet, “The Automat” is a fond remembrance of a vanished era – the past seen through a tiny glass window.

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Mark Feeney

Boston Globe

May 12, 2022

3/4

Hurwitz takes a terrific subject and treats it with undisguised, and justified, affection. What’s most impressive about “The Automat” is how much ground it covers.

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Sarah Jane

Austin Chronicle

May 12, 2022

The Automat is rather like a nickel slice of pie or bowl of mac & cheese you’d get from one of their restaurants. It’s not fancy, but it’s good.

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Jeffrey M. Anderson

Combustible Celluloid

Dec 11, 2022

3.5/4

Director Lisa Hurwitz has made an absolute delight of a documentary telling a seemingly non-essential and yet totally essential piece of forgotten history.

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Tom O'Brien

Next Best Picture

Dec 5, 2022

7/10

And memories are where the meat of “The Automat” lies, as Hurwitz has collected a wide array of testimonials — some from celebrities, others everyday folks — to fondly share what the automat meant to them.

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Raquel Stecher

Out of the Past

Nov 21, 2022

What The Automat documentary excels at is offering viewers a contextual history of how this business was born, how it thrived and how it became part of the social fabric of New York City and Philadelphia.

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Lester G

May 18, 2022

Enjoyed the nostalgia.

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Nancy

Apr 24, 2022

Charming and interesting!

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Lisa J

Apr 9, 2022

The screening was canceled and Fandango never emailed me so I didn’t find out until I got to the theater.

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Gary H

Apr 7, 2022

Wonderful look back on the life and times of a New York and Philadelphia institution.

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dave b

@RT51811019 Mar 23, 2024

I went to an Automat once as a child. I loved this movie. We need more documentaries similar to this.

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The Med City Movie Guy R

@TheMedCityMovieGuy Mar 4, 2024

For most of the 20th century the automat, a diner-setting fitted only with food vending windows, was a fixture both in large cities like New York and Philadelphia as well as in pop culture. The Automat director Lisa Hurwitz introduces (or re-introduces) these ubiquitous eateries with the help of the likes of Mel Brooks, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Colin Powell recounting their own visceral and gastric connections to these cafeterias who at their peak fed nearly 800,000 people per day. One of the more interesting and enjoyable documentaries of the last decade and precisely what a good documentary should be: the presentation and preservation of a unique facet of our shared culture.

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Lisa Hurwitz

Director

Mel Brooks

Self

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Self

Colin Powell

Self

Carl Reiner

Self

Elliott Gould

Self

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Synopsis

Before fast food we had something better. Our grandparents told us stories of gathering around communal tables, sharing their lives, their struggles, and their dreams with strangers at The Automat. In the long awaited Horn & Hardart documentary relive the phenomena of America's original and most beloved restaurant chain. The one hundred year Automat saga serves up never before-seen archival footage and photographs and a cast including celebrity customers, company executives, historians, and members of the Horn & Hardart families.

Director: Lisa Hurwitz
Producer: Lisa Hurwitz, Alec Shuldiner, Russell Greene
Screenwriter: Michael Levine
Distributor: A Slice of Pie Productions
Production Co: A Slice of Pie Productions
Genre: Documentary
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Feb 18, 2022, Limited
Box Office (Gross USA): $257.4K
Runtime: 1h 59m

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