A FANTASTICAL MEAL (1900)
aka Le repas fantastique
Article 4660 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-20-2014
Directed by Georges Melies
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Comic trick short

A family sits down to dinner but encounters difficulties when their food, and their table starts exhibiting strange behaviors.

The strange behaviors include such typical Meliesian touches as the the chairs disappearing from under their seats, the table becoming really tall, really short, vanishing and reappearing around the room. It gets weirder as it goes along when a ghostly figure appears over the table and turns into a box of dynamite (identifiable because the word “dynamite” is emblazoned across it) just as the master of the house attacks it. It’s a typical Melies short, but it the touches of humor work and it’s a fairly fun short, though I’m not quite sure how to describe the weird ending where one of the characters seems to be transformed into a bouncing bundle of clothes.