YMMV / Foam Bath

• Adorkable: Anna, a nerd for medicine science sporting Nerd Glasses.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The dog stealing the pheasant and stripping off Klári's wedding clothes.
• Critical Backlash: While some critics praised the movie, most were rather harsh in their dismissal. Jenő Koltai, the film's technical director wrote an essay in response to the backlash, arguing that viewers were not ready for an animated film that mingles realistic themes with unrealistic animation styles. In fact, more modern reviewers have also wondered if 1980s critics had actually hated the movie or if they were merely uncomfortable with how accurately and comically it portrayed the problems of '70s urban life. In any case, most of the criticism targeted the presentation and visual style rather than the content, and it took decades 'till people started actively discussing what the film's creators were going for.
• Cult Classic: Very minor case, but the film proved surprisingly popular among a thin segment of Hungarian youth, from the early 2000s onward. Composer János Másik recalls being invited to fan screenings long after the original release, commenting that this proves the film was "ahead of its time".
• Ending Fatigue: The plot concludes a while before the film ends with a mishmash of musical numbers and dialogue scenes. A 3 minute song with abstract, repetitive lyrics is followed by Anna going on an entirely dialogue-free stroll accompanied by several minutes of surreal imagery of couples kissing. After a Time Skip, Anna and Zsolt have an intimate chat laying out the film's themes from their own perspective, the characters attend a naming ceremony, and Klára shares her viewpoints with Zsolt. The final shot is Anna sitting in one place for half a minute as the music keeps going after the screen has faded to black.
• Padding: The film was meant to be less than an hour long but the final cut added about 20 minutes. Many shots linger on, some dialogue scenes seem to go in circles, the same points are spelled out over and over, there's lengthy interviews with real life people and an actual TV show excerpt interrupting the story, and some of the songs arguably outstay their welcome. Some shots are recycled, others don't feature any animation at all, just fancy light effects. The plot could easily have been trimmed down to a ~20 minute short. However, given the creator's background and interest in exploring underappreciated niches of society, telling a story was perhaps not his main focus — the pointless chitchat and frequent allusions to '70s-era cultural items do give the film a special charm, making it an Unintentional Period Piece.
• Spiritual Successor: The director died during the pre-production of his second movie, an adaptation of Voltaire's Candide. The project was picked up again by young Hungarian animation students in the 2010s, who created a short test film based on Foam Bath's animation style and some of Kovásznai's original production notes, though completely disregarding his proposed character designs and updating the story with modern pop cultural and political references. A full miniseries titled The Adventures of Candide or simply Candide was finally released in late 2018.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Though it was released in 1980, the film is a work of 70s Eastern European urban life, especially since so much of its dialogue and songs meander into all sorts of tangents. Parenting trends taken from actual 70s interviews, clothing and hair styles, vintage household items (dial phones, old washing machines, black-and-white TV sets, clunky cloth dryers), a Ford Capri... While many of these things were still part of daily life well into the 90s in former East Bloc countries, the film is mainly at home in the 70s. Even the movie's official synopsis has accepted this label, categorizing it as a "nemzedéki közérzetfilm" or a "generational general feeling film" from the late 70s. Yet the music doesn't sound dated because it meshes together so many styles, and the zany experimental animation feels almost timeless exactly because it feels so out of place in any era of animation.
• Vindicated by History: The movie is still little-known and very divisive. But due to the accessibility and audience provided by the internet alongside the critical analysis of Kovásznai's artistic endeavors, it has also been slowly gaining appreciation. Certainly more than when it had tanked in cinemas in 1980. In a wider sense, Kovásznai himself has been inspiring younger artists, such as the production team who created the 2018 adult animated comedy series Candide based on an abandoned Kovásznai film. As further proof of the movie's newfound appreciation, it was digitally remastered and released on Blu-ray in France in 2021 and in the US in 2024.

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