Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Menu" is an American 10-minute live action short film from 1933, so this one will have its 85th anniversary next year already. The names of director Grinde and writer Smith will certainly not be to familiar to most, but this is the film that got 2-time Academy Award winner Pete Smith his very first of many Oscar nominations. He was the producer and narrator here. This film is about cooking as the title already gives away. We have a housewife here preparing the perfect meal that he husband can eat despite his tummy troubles. The cast isn't two shabby, two people with a star on the Walk of fame including a National Board of Review winner and an Oscar nominee. But the project is just too ridiculous. The comedy by the narrator while we see her prepare the duck is not funny and even if you love cooking (more than I do), there's really no point in seeing this one here. The Oscar nomination was way too much and it lost to a geography/travel documentary film and it would have been way worse even if it had taken home the crown. I may be a bit biased here as a vegetarian too, but this really wasn't a convincing work. Most production values are pretty low and the fact that it is in color (surprisingly given its time) does not make it a better watch either. Huge thumbs-down.

Steve Pulaski Nick Grinde's Menu is an uproariously funny short film, focusing on a chef (Pete Smith), who is summoned by the narrator of the short (also Smith) to assist a housewife (Una Merkel) in cooking a complete duck dinner with baked apples that will be delicious and not give her husband (Luis Alberni) debilitating indigestion. The narrator talks us through several hilarious scenes between the chef and the housewife, as he teaches her to prepare the duck and the proper steps of seasoning and topping it off before it is cooked.Menu feels like a playful nudge in the sides of the cooking shows we see network Television populated with, despite being over eighty years old. Smith has an elegance and a deadpan sense of wit in the short, frequently poking fun at the ineptitude of the housewife or playing along to the chef's free-spirited cooking process throughout the short. Never is writer Thorne Smith's screenplay too condescending or mean-spirited but, much like the duck dinner, fresh and pleasant, enough to leave one with an appetite for more. At ten minutes, Menu is a fulfilling comedic appetizer.Starring: Pete Smith, Una Merkel, and Luis Alberni. Directed by: Nick Grinde.

Neil Doyle This is a rare case of a short that was so highly regarded by the makers that it was remade under another title several years later. Audiences must have loved it.I can't say that much for it. A woman (UNA MERKEL), in a modern looking kitchen with all sorts of gadgets, is a complete klutz until, by magic, a chef appears to help her stuff a duck before her husband (FRANKLIN PANGBORN) comes home from work with some company. Otherwise, the poor woman would have nothing to show for her efforts but a mess on the kitchen floor which he clears up immediately. He also shows her how to make baked apples.The real source of amusement is the script, narrated in witty fashion by Pete Smith and making a lot of funny observations.It's funny, not hilarious, and for anyone interested in gourmet cooking it might be even more worth watching.

Ursula 2.7T I love these little "one reel wonders" that TCM throws in at the end of their regularly scheduled movies as filler till the next movie comes on. I caught this one at the end of Sunrise, during TCM's 31 Days of Oscar. Seems this little 1933 one-reeler was nominated for Best Short Subject.It's very amusing. An early technicolor about a man with indigestion, thanks to a wife who's a klutzenheimer in the kitchen. Una Merkel plays the dippy wife -- she utters about 3 words but is told by the unseen narrator that he's the only one allowed to talk! The narrator acts as an omnipotent overseer, putting broken eggs and spilled condiments back together again by the magic of reverse-action filming. He also brings in a chef in a puff of smoke, to come to the housewife's rescue. We are then treated to a mini-cooking show, with instructions on how to prepare stuffed duck and baked apples. It's quite droll, with the narrator getting off such funny zingers as: "Cook the stuffing for 15 minutes, for that perfect taste that you love to burp up later." "Now clutch the apple firmly so it will realize the futility of any resistance." Very funny and amusing. Too bad there's no way to actually know when this will be on again. I don't think TCM lists its one-reel wonders in its programming guide, which is too bad. Well, if you run across "The Menu" at the end of your regularly scheduled program, be sure to stick around and watch it. I think you'll enjoy it!