Waitress

Director: Adrienne Shelly
Starring: Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Cheryl Hines, Jeremy Sisto, Andy Griffith, Adrienne Shelly
Running Time: 108 min.
Rating: PG-13

**1/2 (out of ****)

One word kept popping into my head as I watched Waitress: "Insignificant." If you never saw it you wouldn't miss a thing. It's the kind of movie women drag their boyfriends and husbands to kicking and screaming and will probably end up in regular rotation on Lifetime television in the next couple of years. Yes, it's a "chick flick." And that's fine by me. My tolerance for those is abnormally (and some say embarrassingly) high, as I've been known to shamelessly enjoy feminine tearjerkers such as A Walk to Remember and The Notebook.

Waitress is the absolute worst kind though. It tries to pass off a bunch of tired clichés and cartoon characters as a deep story in an effort to prop women up so they feel good about themselves leaving the theater. It hides behind a false indie sensibility to try to make us believe we're watching something that amounts to more than a TV movie of the week. All men are abusive pigs and all women are afraid to leave them because they hate themselves. We know the drill.

You may recognize this movie under the many different titles and incarnations it's gone through over the past 50 years. There's no mistaking that "desperate housewives" are the audience for this one, but what's funny is that both sexes are given equally shallow treatment in this film that boasts an IQ of about 10. What, really, can you say about a movie with a final scene featuring two characters LITERALLY skipping off into the sunset? That Waitress has actually generated Oscar buzz says a whole lot more about the dearth of quality films in 2007 than the movie itself. Yet it's still pretty impossible to hate. It's too sweet and good hearted for that.

Jenna (Russell) is a small-town Southern waitress stuck in an unhappy marriage to her controlling jerk husband Earl (Jeremy Sisto, who's probably earned a masters degree playing characters like this by now) and works as a waitress at Joe's pie diner, where she's regularly yelled at by her abrasive boss. She has a unique gift for creating excellent tasting pies, which she often gives inventive titles to such as "I Don't Want Earl's Baby Pie," in honor of her upcoming pregnancy. She confides to her best friends and co-workers at the diner, Becky (Cheryl Hines) and Dawn (writer/director Adrienne Shelly), but they have romantic problems of their own.

Jenna is soon taken aback and thoroughly creeped out after a visit to her new gynecologist, the very nervous and clumsy Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion), but that last all of about two visits. Before you know it they're emerged in a passionate affair and the relationship with the doctor strengthens Jenna as a person and marks the first time she could truly be considered "happy." Now if she could only find the courage to accept her pregnancy and free herself from the controlling grip of her husband, which seems to escalate to hilarious heights as each minute of this film wears on. She finds a surprising ally in Joe (Andy Griffith), the cranky old curmudgeon who owns the diner and encourages her to escape this mess she's created for herself.

The waitress with a heart of gold. The jerk husband. The bad boss. The loyal best friend. The cranky old man who dispenses life wisdom. All the characters in this movie, which has earned unjustified worldwide praise, can be described in just a few words. That would be fine and I don't doubt a great film could be made with them in it, but they'd have to transcend those descriptions. They don't here. They're not real people, just broad caricatures going through the necessary, predictable motions of the screenplay.

All the actors give fine performances, but it's unreasonable to expect any of them to invest any real depth into this when it's clear there's none to begin with. All the stereotypes are embarrassing and simple, but the worst has to be Sisto's white trash husband. You could file him under "HOW NOT TO WRITE A MOVIE CHARACTER" in your screenwriting handbook. Will he tell Jenna she's "never been sexy?" Will he get angry and jealous that she's making money? Will he hit her? Maybe before the film's over he could even have one huge public outburst.

By making the character a stereotypical caveman with no thoughts or feelings Shelly stacks the deck and makes Jenna look like an idiot for staying with him. I didn't feel sorry for her. I just thought she was a wimp with no self-respect for herself. It's very tricky to ask your audience to root for a protagonist with no self-esteem who allows themselves to be beaten down psychologically throughout the film. All it does is make it look like you're pulling strings and setting things up, which was exactly what Shelly was doing.

Everything is there just so it can build to the big obligatory happy ending. Will Jenna leave her husband? Will she enter (and win) the pie-making contest? Will she accept her new baby? Are pies a metaphor for finding happiness in life? You've seen this movie before you even press play on the DVD remote. An old re-run of The Facts of Life contains more insight than anything in Shelly's screenplay.

If there's one thing fans of this movie and myself can agree on it's that this is the best performance of Keri Russell's career. I'm not sure what that's saying though considering this is the first time she's ever been asked to really carry a movie. She proves more than capable, investing Jenna with warmth and charm but it isn't an Oscar worthy performance, as some have claimed. Not even by a long shot. Oscar nominated performances come when an actor digs down deep to bring a human being to life with complexity. And it can happen in even the most lightweight romantic comedy like this.

Unfairly though, Russell wasn't given the type of role where she could do that and isn't one of the very few actresses who can create that magic out of thin air. This is a great role for her and a very good performance but it would have been an even better one if Jenna was written with more to her so she'd be able to explore more as an actress. That's a reoccurring problem with every character in the film, except Fillion's "Dr. Feelgood," but only because he's too bland and boring to even qualify as a stereotypical cliché. Probably the best performance comes from Andy Griffith who at least does a great job fooling us into thinking his cranky old man is more substantial than we're giving him credit for. He's not, but it's a good effort nonetheless.

One of the script's only signs of true intelligence is that it touches on an issue that's never brought up in movies about pregnancy. That there are pregnant women out there who aren't the slightest bit happy about it, yet aren't upset enough to have an abortion. They don't want the baby because maybe they're scared they won't be a good mother or can't provide them with the love they deserve. Yet somehow they do the best they can and try to make it work. That's interesting.

Everyone has been rooting really hard for this film and it's not hard to see why. The murder of writer/director Adrienne Shelly shortly following the completion of this film is beyond tragic. It's clear she had a vision and that we'll never see another film from her or see the full extent of her talents is a great loss. But this just isn't very good.

It's a charming, well-intentioned heart warmer with vibrant performances and a terrible screenplay. If you're just looking for a good time it does fit the bill, but I just found it too witless and syrupy to really get behind and support. One page of this script probably contains more sugar than any of Jenna's pies. It's strange Shelly had such a battle getting this picture made because you could categorize it as "independent" in financing only. Ironically, Waitress better qualifies as the most mainstream Hollywood film released this year.