Review of No Menus Please

No Menus Please on Reel 13

These shorts are starting to annoy me with their consistent lack of quality. And in this case, I actually watched all three competitors so I KNOW that there were better films to choose from. This was actually the worst of all three, but I had a feeling it would win. The director of the film turned out to be a friend of a friend and I was forwarded an email from the director which asked all his friends to go to reel13.org and vote. He also asked his friends to forward it around, which it seems they did. The victory of NO MENUS PLEASE proves that it's not about the best short, it's about the filmmakers with the largest email lists.

NO MENUS PLEASE is about a recent Chinese immigrant whose first job is to slide menus for a local Chinese restaurant under people's apartment doors. He meets up with an Indian immigrant whose job is the same (only for an Indian restaurant, obviously…). They start to compete with one another and then figure out a way to work together. When I first read the synopsis, I thought it was cute. When I watched the film, it occurred to me: how dynamic could illegal menu distribution really be? (Answer: not very).

The film is slow, boring and repetitive. Worst of all, for an alleged comedy, it's not really funny. The director seems to be using non-actors, all of which are pretty bad, even the ones that don't speak English. There is one awful scene with a random blonde woman who yells at our hero for a whole minute (this is forever in a short) without a second of believability – we're talking student film-type performances.

If anything about the film is worse than the acting, it's the ineffective and misguided direction. The blocking on dialogue scenes is extremely awkward and uninspired. The director lingers on scenes way too long. He uses split screen at one point in the film that doesn't work and only comes off as hokey and gimmicky. Also, he made the bizarre choice of cutting to black several times during the "climactic" fight scene. And what's with the jazzy score?

What's most upsetting about NO MENUS PLEASE is that it beat a film called THE DEBT, which is by far, the best of any of the shorts I've seen as a part of Reel 13. It employs honest, in-your-face filmmaking a la Paul Greengrass. It has a sense of urgency in the editing and angle choices and most importantly, it's about something. It was all the things NO MENUS was not. It's a crime that more people didn't get to see it.

(For more information on this or any other Reel 13 Short, check out their website at www.reel13.org)

Posted on 11/19/08 by: eplromeo8 03:33 PM