Menu

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.

A magical chef appears out of nowhere to help a helpless housewife cook a duck for her husband suffering indigestion. It's a mildly amusing comedic short narrated by the sarcastic Pete Smith. It's a functional cooking show. Trussing the duck is very impressive. It's all rather fast. A normal modern cooking show would have the chef doing his own narration. This is splitting up the job and it creates a distance between the two sides of the job.

This very slight MGM comedy short from 1933 isn't particularly funny, but it received an Oscar nomination for "Best Short Subject" that year, and it has the wonderful UNA MERKEL in her physical prime in TECHNICOLOR! (She would not appear in a color feature film until the early '50's MGM remake of "The Merry Widow" starring Lana Turner.) I'd give "Menu" a "10" if it had more of Merkel, but as it stands, it's worthy of an "8" for a Technicolor Una Merkel alone. Merkel was one of the great supporting players of the Hollywood studio era, and one of its most prolific, appearing in about three dozen feature films, primarily for MGM and Warner Brothers from 1931 to 1934. "Menu" is an early example of the three-strip Technicolor process that would not be used in feature films until 1935's "Becky Sharp" with Miriam Hopkins. Up until that point, it was reserved for short films, but usually musical shorts, unlike this simple "Pete Smith" MGM comedy short, most of which were shot in plain B&W. Una Merkel, with her strawberry blonde hair, blue eyes and pale pink complexion, was a feast for the eyes in the then "new" Technicolor process, and is the primary reason to see this film.

I think you either liked Pete Smith or you didn't; it's hard to imagine there being much middle ground with his brand of humour. On the whole, I did quite enjoy some of his commentaries and if you get past the rather condescending and sexist first couple of minutes of this feature, then his narration of the cooking process of stuffed duck is lightly entertaining. It's entirely observational, this one, so aside from a pantomime-style puff of smoke to introduce and remove the chef who's doing the work there are no visual effects to accompany what could actually be a method of preparing an edible meal. The pudding, which appeared to be sugar, and more sugar, placed into a partially denuded apple had my arteries hardening at the very thought of it, and it also features some of the most anaemic carrots I've ever seen, too. It is very much of it's time and aimed, I'd say, at a certain kind of middle class audience - but given that, it does raise a smile now and again.

Menu (1933)

** (out of 4)

Technicolor short from MGM has Pete Smith teaching women how to cook a duck that won't make their husbands sick. I've seen quite a few of these Smith educational shorts and while most of them are entertaining the same can't be said for this one. Even at nine minutes this thing goes on too long and none of the comedy in the film works.

You can find this short playing on TCM quite often and Warner has released it on their Katharine Hepburn set. This is one of the weaker Smith shorts but they all have a certain quality.