Movie Review of Waitress

Keri Russell is Not Exactly Sugar and Spice in Dark Comedy Film

May 2, 2007

This dark comedy provides a heaping portion of luscious desserts, quirky characters, small-town charm, and cheating spouses.

At Joe’s Pie Diner, patrons get their choice of 27 different varieties of pie every day, with a new flavor created daily. The people who work there, however, have drab lives without variety or flavor. Things are about to change....

A Talented Pie Chef

Waitress introduces us to Jenna (Keri Russell), a talented pie chef and waitress, who is unhappily married to a selfish control freak named Earl (Jeremy Sisto). When he’s not forcing affection, denying her requests, demanding her tips, or physically abusing her, Earl is honking his car horn in an audible attempt to mark his territory. Just about the only thing that could make Jenna’s life with Earl more miserable would be an unplanned pregnancy, which is where Jenna’s story begins.

Enlisting the aid of her fellow waitresses Becky (Cheryl Hines) and Dawn (Adrienne Shelly, who also wrote and directed the film before her tragic murder in November 2006), Jenna struggles through the early months of her pregnancy, fighting morning sickness and feeling “about as sexy as a tree stump.” When her regular OB-GYN goes into partial retirement and a handsome young doctor replaces her, unexpected and inappropriate sparks ignite between them. The strangely awkward and definitely married Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion) unsuccessfully fights his attraction to his new obstetrical patient with comic results. Suddenly, Jenna’s self-image and outlook on life change for the better, and she sees a possible escape from her trapped existence.

The overall tone of Waitress is convincingly dark and amusing, and the actors work well together as an odd assortment of small-town people with strengths and weaknesses: one exception: poor Earl lacks any redeeming qualities other than “good hair.” Although the style and situations may not be realistic, the film has an emotional truth that will resonate among most audience members.

The cast includes eccentric supporting actors Andy Griffith as Joe, a cranky patron (who also happens to own the pie diner), Eddie Jemison as a poetry-reciting, mad stalking elf who fancies Dawn, and Lew Temple as Jenna’s order-barking manager at the restaurant.

In films such as Fracture, The Good Girl, and Unfaithful, infidelity has disastrous results. In Waitress, cheating spouses (and there are several of them) are just part of the fun. The surreal storytelling, which includes melodramatic fantasies, unusual camera angles, self-conscious humor, glorious colors and textures, and mouth-watering pastries, somehow make the concept of cheating much easier for audiences to swallow.

The copyright of the article Movie Review of Waitress in Romantic Comedy Films is owned by Leslie C. Halpern. Permission to republish Movie Review of Waitress in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.