Waitress: A Flawed Yet Delightful Romp

Reviewing the work of someone who is deceased can be a difficult task. One might feel it is permissible to be overcritical of their work because they are no longer here to defend it. On the other hand the reviewer could be afraid to point out the flaws in the work since the artist is dead. Personally, I feel the best way to honor a deceased artist is to review their work as if they were alive. That way it is reviewed fairly and objectively. This is the attitude I will be taking when I write my review of The Dark Knight later this summer. It is also the same approach I’m applying to my review of the film Waitress.

Waitress is a movie about escaping one’s problems and finding out what kind of person you are at heart. It stars Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Jeremy Sisto and Andy Griffith and was written and directed by the late Adrienne Shelly. The plot follows a young southern waitress named Jenna (Russell) who has big problems. She’s stuck in an unhappy marriage to an abusive husband (Sisto) who controls her to the point where he won’t let her have a car so he knows that she can’t go far. She dreams of using her exceptional pie making skills to open her own restaurant and leave her husband forever. But her plans come to a screeching halt when she finds out she is pregnant. She dreads having the child, for she feels it will tie her forever to her husband. It is soon after she discovers her pregnancy that the regular town doctor is replaced by a new doctor named Jim (Fillion). Although she is put off by his nervousness the two end up having a passionate affair. Eventually her husband finds out about the baby and becomes even more dominating over her. As the months go by Jenna begins to see that motherhood isn’t the soul killing stigma she originally thought it would be. The film ends with her baby being born and Jenna being able to change her life for the better.

Before I point out what I didn’t like about the movie I’ll talk about what I did like. The film seemed to say our initial perceptions of people are often wrong. While first impressions habitually stick, they often dissolve once the person is better known. When Jenna first meets Jim she doesn’t like him and exclaims that he makes her uncomfortable. But as she gets to know him she finds he acts as a stimulant in her life. After they begin their affair he becomes a close friend in addition to being a lover. Perception shattering is additionally shown with the character of Old Joe, played by Andy Griffith. Old Joe is the owner of the diner Jenna works at and is generally a crabby old man. But in spite of his demanding nature he holds Jenna in high regard and tries to give her advice so she will not live her life unhappily.

However, I did have some real problems with other aspects of the film. The biggest problem I had was with Jenna’s husband. He had ABSOLUTLY no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He was a bastard from beginning to end, so much so that I found it impossible to understand how anyone would ever date him, much less marry him. In most abusive relationships the abuser will show tenderness after they abuse their spouse. Here he would hit her and then badger her some more. The whole time I kept waiting to see some reason why she would have first fallen for him. But it never came. He was so complete in his abuse and selfishness that he almost seemed a caricature. For me the most over the top moment is when she tells him she is pregnant and he makes her promise that she will not love the baby more then she loves him. For me to believe she would have married him I needed to see a reason she would have fallen for him, either during their time together or at the very least by having a flashback to their dating days.

I also felt that the end was very clichéd. I won’t spoil exactly how she her life at the end of the movie is changed, but it is painfully obvious how it will happen not long into the movie. It was unfortunate it ended up that way because many of the other kinds of clichés one would expect from this type of movie do not occur.

In spite of the problems, I wouldn’t write off Waitress as a failure. It had quirky dialogue and direction and the romantic leads grow on the viewer. I think with time Adrienne Shelly would have become a fine contributor to film, which makes her untimely passing all the more dreadful. Instead of being a promising up and comer, a senseless act of violence had made her another what-could-have-been Hollywood tragedy.