When "The Atomic Cafe" was released, film critic Roger Ebert discussed the style and methods the filmmakers used, writing, "The makers of "The Atomic Cafe" sifted through thousands of feet of Army films, newsreels, government propaganda films and old television broadcasts to come up with the material in their film, which is presented without any narration, as a record of some of the ways in which the bomb entered American folklore. There are songs, speeches politicians, and frightening documentary footage of guinea-pig American troops shielding themselves from an atomic blast and then exposing themselves to radiation neither they nor their officers understood."