Waitress (2007)

Writer, director, actress Adrienne Shelly was tragically murdered around the time of this movie’s release, and I had wondered what effect that had on the films positive reception. There had been talk that had Shelly lived Waitress could have been the start of a successful directorial career, this we will never know. Certainly the film is charming, though the sitcomy premise (waitress in bad marriage gets pregnant has affair with gynaecologist) and diner setting had me wondering how much this was going to be like reruns of Alice. I thought the diner or ‘pie shop’ material not exceptional, though it grew on me, to be secondary, as I’m sure it was meant to be, to waitress Jenny’s (Keri Russell) existential journey. Jeremy Sisto, so good at playing crazy creeps, does a wonderful job as an intimidating jerk of a husband, who is also co-dependent on his long emotional distant wife. Russell and Sisto’s relationship is so bad, that it takes her months to tell him she’s pregnant, as the waitress contemplates some kind of escape from her situation. Jenny’s desired golden parachute is the prize money from a big pie making contest, but ultimately her husband won’t let her enter. Jenny does find release and ultimately catharsis through an affair with her gynecologist, which forms the heart of the movie. Russell and Nathan Fillon, who plays the doctor, have a great chemistry together, they make the movie, and you can really buy how this relationship could prove so pivotal to the protagonists emotional development. However Fillon alone is not the only positive male emotional influence in Jenny’s life, the other being Andy Griffith’s old Joe, the supposedly crumudgenly rich regular at the pie shop, who of course has a heart of gold. Griffith’s seeming stereotypical casting (it is a southern based movie after all) shouldn’t necessarily work, but it does, and in fact this is true with much in the film. The movie manages to keep both its quirky and serious themes in balance, in fact seamlessly, and that’s something not every screen writer and director can do. While the death of this films author may have increased its publicity, this movie is a success on its own terms, being a rather pleasant romp. Four out of Five.