Waitress
Grade: B
I miss “Felicity.” It was a close call, but I always preferred Ben over Noel, whereas my partner preferred Noel over Ben. Just one of the many reasons our relationship works.
Keri Russell is lovely as a waitress with a magical pie-making touch. Stuck in a loveless and slightly menacing marriage, a positive result on a home pregnancy test simultaneously traps her and sets her free. Self-consciously quirky yet sweetly charming, this is the sort of movie that comes complete with sidekick waitresses – one with a goofy but lovable boyfriend in a bow tie and another with a big SECRET that the audience knows an hour before the characters do, a cantankerous and crusty diner owner with a heart of gold hidden just below the surface, and a fairy tale ending that’s never for a moment in any doubt.
Funny in a breezy, kind-hearted sort of way, dialogue is just a touch stilted and characters just ever-so-slightly caricatured, falling somewhere between the dark comic reality of an “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and the far more tame “Alice” TV sitcom version. Picture midway between Ellen Burstyn and Linda Lavin, and you kind of end up with Keri Russell – vulnerable, hopeful, resigned, sarcastic and spunky. Happily, no one tells anyone to “kiss my grits,” but there are moments that come perilously close.
As the Ob/Gyn love interest, Nathan Fillion provides little real chemistry with Russell, but rather a nice sense of friendship borne out of mutually quiet desperation. Jeremy Sisto gets the thankless task of playing a massively-insecure and borderline pathological husband, but somehow manages to make him just a bit more sympathetic and pathetic than the screenplay allows. The real relationship here rests between Russell and the wonderful Andy Griffith, an old grouch who understands the true meaning of a road not taken – their brief scenes together provide the film with its genuine heart.
I miss “Felicity.” It was a close call, but I always preferred Ben over Noel, whereas my partner preferred Noel over Ben. Just one of the many reasons our relationship works.
Keri Russell is lovely as a waitress with a magical pie-making touch. Stuck in a loveless and slightly menacing marriage, a positive result on a home pregnancy test simultaneously traps her and sets her free. Self-consciously quirky yet sweetly charming, this is the sort of movie that comes complete with sidekick waitresses – one with a goofy but lovable boyfriend in a bow tie and another with a big SECRET that the audience knows an hour before the characters do, a cantankerous and crusty diner owner with a heart of gold hidden just below the surface, and a fairy tale ending that’s never for a moment in any doubt.
Funny in a breezy, kind-hearted sort of way, dialogue is just a touch stilted and characters just ever-so-slightly caricatured, falling somewhere between the dark comic reality of an “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and the far more tame “Alice” TV sitcom version. Picture midway between Ellen Burstyn and Linda Lavin, and you kind of end up with Keri Russell – vulnerable, hopeful, resigned, sarcastic and spunky. Happily, no one tells anyone to “kiss my grits,” but there are moments that come perilously close.
As the Ob/Gyn love interest, Nathan Fillion provides little real chemistry with Russell, but rather a nice sense of friendship borne out of mutually quiet desperation. Jeremy Sisto gets the thankless task of playing a massively-insecure and borderline pathological husband, but somehow manages to make him just a bit more sympathetic and pathetic than the screenplay allows. The real relationship here rests between Russell and the wonderful Andy Griffith, an old grouch who understands the true meaning of a road not taken – their brief scenes together provide the film with its genuine heart.
As with all fairy tales, abortion is never an option, the husband smacks but never hits, and a Deus ex machine is waiting in the wings so our waitress can indeed live happily ever after.
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More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0473308/
posted by SternReviews @ 12:07 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Andy,
Thank you for your well done review of this sweet film.
Perhaps you could have mentioned the tragic death of writer, director, and actress Adrienne Shelly.
Best regards, Marc
andy,
i haven't seen the movie, but a bit of movie trivia - our very good friend, laura donnelly, whose mother and dicky's mother knew each other since their childhood in paris, baked all the pies for this movie.
beth
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