Cooktopi The acting in this movie is really good.

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

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.

Tad Pole " . . . which makes it a dead duck." So observes Pete Smith, with his trademark Snarkiness, at one juncture in this cooking fantasy. If MENU's main character, John Xavier Omsk, added his name up for Scrabble value, it would total a sizable 40 points. (My full name has the same number of letters, but yields only half as many points.) Perhaps more interesting to word game players (at least those of grandpa's or great-grandpa's generation) is that one of the notable clues for vintage crossword puzzles plays John's wife, Mrs. Omsk. Yep, Una Merkel (as in 37 Down: Actress _ _ _ Merkel) makes an appearance here as a particularly ditsy blonde. Referred to by narrator Smith as "this dizzy dame," Una tries to crack open an egg with a metal nutcracker! Once chef Luis Alberni pops into the scene like some sort of kitchen genii, things settle down into two actual recipes being given and prepared: one for dressing (as in, how to stuff a duck), and the other for making baked apples (no, you cannot just set an apple on the sidewalk in the summer--I suppose you actually COULD, but it probably would not taste as good as these ones seen on the screen).

Eugene Zonarich 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.

Ron Oliver An MGM PETE SMITH Short Subject.A very silly housewife receives help with her dinner MENU - and a cure for her hubby's upset tummy - when a chef magically arrives in her kitchen.This fanciful little film is an enjoyable bit of early Technicolor fluff. The practical demonstrations, mixed up with the gentle humor, serve up a most pleasing result - almost as appetizing as the roast duck & baked apples. Movie mavens will recognize Franklin Pangborn as the dyspeptic husband, Una Merkel as his featherbrained wife, and Luis Alberni as the remarkable chef, all uncredited.Off-the-wall narrator Pete Smith would produce a reworked version of this story - with Oscar winning results - four years later in PENNY WISDOM (1937).Often overlooked or neglected today, the one and two-reel short subjects were useful to the Studios as important training grounds for new or burgeoning talents, both in front & behind the camera. The dynamics for creating a successful short subject was completely different from that of a feature length film, something akin to writing a topnotch short story rather than a novel. Economical to produce in terms of both budget & schedule and capable of portraying a wide range of material, short subjects were the perfect complement to the Studios' feature films.