The Meal

This is not a great movie. It is however watchable but dated. Produced and directed by R John Hugh a Central Florida resident. Carl Betz and Dina Merrill offer fine performances and the plot flows smoothly. Surprise ending with overtones of revelations of homosexuality.

This film looks like a tourist took his Super 8 camera to a dinner party in Florida and told everyone they were going to be in a movie! If not for the three established actors in the cast, it would barely pass muster as a home movie. Even so, the end result is sloppy, amateurish and overly ambitious. The film wants to draw parallels between the way people devour food and the way people devour each other. This is (not-so-subtley) hammered home by continuous shots of food being displayed and carved and consumed. The story is very heavy for such thin production values and lack of acting talent. The usually glorious Merrill (who always looks amazing) is saddled with a terrifyingly ugly wig that Shirley Jones wouldn't spit on. She tries so hard to give a performance, but there is no hope under this direction. Ames is about as far down as one can come after a career that included over 100 films like "Battleground", "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" and "Peyton Place". He and Merrill attempt to make something happen, but are defeated in their main scene by (of all things) ice hitting a glass(because the sound quality is so poor!) Listen for it. Betz gives it his best shot as well, but is hopelessly done in by the lame production. All of the other characters are portrayed by numbingly bad amateurs who, in very many cases, never got another role in TV or movies! One girl who tries to make an impact is Logan (billed as "Introducing..." in the credits, but never heard from again!) There is just no way that a story with all this visual symbolism and self-important dialogue can come to life when filmed with a home movie camera containing bad lighting and sound. ***SPOILER*** Though nothing is actually shown, fans of "The Donna Reed Show" should get a mild shock seeing her TV husband (Betz) waking up with his pants undone next to another man! In this regard, the film is notable since that is a plot twist that hadn't been utilized much in that time (or even since, really...)