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Waiting..
2005 - UR - 93 Mins.
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| Director: Rob McKittrick | | Producer: Adam Rosenfelt, Stavros Merjos, Jay Rifkin | | Written By: Rob McKittrick | | Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Justin Long, Anna Faris, David Koechner, Wendie Malick |
| Review by: David Odere |
| Official Site: www.waitingthefilm.com/ |
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'Waiting' is everything 'American Pie' was and more. It crosses several boundaries that most movies would never even dream of crossing but “Waiting” gets away with it. 'Waiting' is a movie about the restaurant industry, and the poor people stuck working in it. Having spent more than my fair share of time working in restaurants, let me assure you that there’s un-mined comedic gold lurking in there and 'Waiting' definatey mines some of it.
In what seems to be an average day at Shenanigan's, a popular chain restaurant, the staff go through hell dealing with customers. Today however is different -- there is a new trainee Mitch (John Francis Daley), being trained to become a server. The luckless trainee gets his orientation through Monty (Ryan Reynolds), who teaches him the ropes as well as the rules of the 'game.' Pretty much the object of the game is to get the other person to look at your balls. As Mitch learns this, he continues to meet the rest of the staff. The chefs who seem to know nothing of hygiene, the lesbian bartender, the philosophical dish washer and the wanna-be-black busboys.
This likable group of characters work really well together, emanating just the right mind frame and body language of real-life servers going through the motions, at least as I remember it to be like. Director and writer Rob McKittrick does a great job with the main theme, but goes wrong with all the Subplots. The subplots all start out great: "the new guy", a "testicle" game, a waiter's "stage fright" at the urinal, another server's impending promotion ... but it's not long before some of these meanderings start to grate and eventually distract. A more experienced director would have kept these subplots from unbalancing the film, and possibly exercised some judicious trimming. The cast however, makes up for these shortcoming, and just seems to be having fun throughout the whole film. Ryan Reynolds (Monty) who must center and carry the plot, seems to be able to do no wrong when it comes to playing comedic leads. John Francis Daley (Mitch) also makes a good impression as "the new guy".
'Waiting' does not match the comedic heights of 'Clerks' or 'Office Space,' as it is lightly plotted and without much profundity, but there is definately something inherently funny about a film that deals with the realities of restaurant employees, and the film has tapped into this. People looking for some irreverent humor will enjoy themselves. In summary, "Waiting..." is sharp-witted and for the most part consistently funny, but also a bit disturbing -- it definitely brought me back to my own days as a Waiter, and reminded me of the reasons I vowed to never be a server again.
*Note: Make sure you don’t miss the Andy Milonakis and Max Kasch song at the end of the movie.
DVD version is Unrated!
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