Too much of everything

The greatest movie ever!

How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I started watching this movie on television half way through and was immediately captivated . It was interrupted by commercials all the time and that irritated me big deal. After it got finished I searched the web to see where I can watch it from the beginning and found on YouTube, in a foreign language though, but the one I speak. I loved absolutely everything about this movie. Refreshing change from clichéd US films of the time.A radiant, oddball comedy-drama about the relationship.This sparkling little gem is not just a hilarious and touching account of the friendship that develops between two women of jarringly different cultures.It also offers a renewed, endearingly quirky vision of America as the land of opportunity, not in the economic sense, but as a place with plenty of room for self-discovery and individuality.

The desert blooms, in more ways than one, when a hefty Bavarian häusfräu is abandoned by her husband on the doorstep of a run-down, off-highway pit stop somewhere in the Mojave Desert, geographically (and culturally) midway between Disneyland and Las Vegas. The fanciful Arabian Nights title offers a clue to director Percy Adlon's intentions, but in this trans-Atlantic fairy tale it takes a good German woman to bring magic (and efficiency) to the desert oasis, dazzling with her sleight-of-hand the gallery of local eccentrics (including an aging ex-Hollywood hippie, played with sensitive self-parody by Jack Palance) and gradually winning the trust and affection of the café's bitter proprietress. It's refreshing in this age of boilerplate buddy film cliché to see such an easy rapport allowed to develop between the two women, but the natural charm of the story is almost overwhelmed by the psychedelic complexity of Adlon's visual scheme. Like his earlier 'Sugarbaby' the film is stylized to distraction, with the unnatural lighting, distorted camera angles, and ostentatious editing functioning as camouflage, perhaps to mask the director's shallow perception of offbeat Americana: Jack Palance with a ponytail is a hoot, but the climactic song and dance routine is (to put it mildly) an embarrassment.

This movie has been one of my favorites for a long time. In fact, I was first inspired to watch it only after listening to a CD of the soundtrack. I think one reason the kids don't "get it" is that the film is really a character study of adult behavior, without the typical gimmicks that sell movies nowadays: hand-to-hand combat, car chases, gunfire, million-dollar stunts, and bombastic sex. I think that this movie appeals primarily to people who watch a movie to learn something--about themselves or about human nature. And it delivers, providing a wonderful expose' of the intricacies and development of interpersonal relationships. The unusual setting of the desert café, along with the quirkiness of the characters and the outstanding musical score, just add spice to the sauce. Definitely a film for "thinking men and women," it takes some effort to "get it" - something most of today's moviegoers are unwilling to expend.

Extremely entertaining movie with a very positive message to those who don't feel life makes any sense and without this notion still can do something about it, even in the American desert. Life offers us all these options if we stay true to ourselves and don't let ourselves drag into negativism and routine. This movie is highly recommendable for all ages and social levels and for people who lost any hope on a better future. Curious coincidence that I saw this movie on the day Jack Palance died without knowing it before. Jack died on November 10 2006 and I had the impression he was very much himself in this movie. Truly comical and absurd the presence of the Australian hitch hiker with his boomerang..