Waitress 2007
I had heard some good things about this movie when it was out, but I think it was largely overlooked. I can see why. There are some good elements at work in this movie of, for, and about women. But also some of it feels kind of tired. The story centers around a waitress at a small-town diner who makes the best pies in the world. Naturally her husband is a louse. He wants to be manipulative except that he’s so bad at it that I had a hard time taking him seriously. And not taking him seriously made me wonder why the waitress didn’t leave him right away, except of course that was being saved for the end of the movie. So that made the main character flawed as well. At the beginning of the movie we find out she is pregnant by her husband with a baby she really doesn’t want but will keep.
The other characters in the movie have typical indie movie quirkiness that is sometimes funny and charming, sometimes just kind of annoying and unbelievable. Andy Griffith plays one of those characters and seems uncomfortable with his lines. This guy practically invented quirky characters, and yet he came off as less than genuine. When I see a movie with a number of performances like that I have to blame the director for either miscasting the role or not being able to get better performances out of her people (the writer/director also plays one of the waitress sidekicks and was murdered in her New York home by a burglar before the movie was released). Nathan Fillion from the defunct sci-fi TV series Firefly fits into that category as well. Being nervous and awkward is part of his character so it isn’t quite as noticeable with him. Part of the problem is the writer/director is trying to set everything out in the dialogue instead of in the performances. There is a lack of nuance that makes the characters more like cartoons than people.
This isn’t a bad movie, but it misses being a very good one. The similar Juno would come along later in 2007 and did a better job of keeping things real.
Written: 23 Feb 2008