Film:  Waitress (on DVD)

Studio:Night and Day Pictures

Director:  Adrienne Shelly

Principal Actors:  Keri Russell, Cheryl Hines, Adrienne Shelly, Jeremy Sisto, Nathan Fillion, Andy Griffith 

DVD Release:  November 2007

Film length:  108 minutes

Rating:  PG-13 

4 ˝ Stars 

Reviewer:  Deborah Ground Buckner 

How is it possible to like a film with no likable characters?  This is the question I've been pondering since viewing Waitress, now available on DVD.  Jenna (Keri Russell-Felicity) is a waitress at Joe's Diner.  In the opening moments of the film, encouraged by her two fellow waitresses Dawn (the late Adrienne Shelly who also wrote and directed the film) and Becky (Cheryl Hines), Jenna takes a home pregnancy test and finds a positive result.  Jenna is not happy with the news, because she hates her husband, Earl (Jeremy Sisto) and wants to leave him.  Earl has “great hair” according to Dawn and Becky, but is a basic, controlling redneck.  Earl is so obviously what he is and always has been that it's difficult to understand how he ever became Jenna's husband if she hates him so. Jenna, a master pie maker, pins all her dreams on entering and winning a pie contest and using the money to begin a new life. 

In her first visit to her OB/GYN, Jenna discovers the sweet lady doctor she has always visited has “semi-retired,” and handsome young Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion) has stepped into her practice.  A torrid affair erupts between Jenna and her married doctor. Meanwhile, Becky, married to an invalid, engages in her own affair, while Dawn plays the singles scene and `hooks up` with Ogie (brilliantly played by Eddie Jemison—I was convinced I was seeing PeeWee Herman on screen!). Jenna creates a new pie each day in the diner, giving it a name that reflects her mood:  “I Hate My Husband” Pie; “I Don't Want to Have Earl's Baby—no, that's too long—Bad Baby Pie.” 

None of the characters are particularly good or particularly evil, but they are all real. Among these oh-so-real people is the captivating performance by Andy Griffith as Old Joe, the owner of the diner. Joe drives the waitresses crazy with his eccentric orders, but Jenna finds a friend in the gruff old curmudgeon who makes her listen to his readings of the horoscopes and advice columns of the morning paper. Joe's minutes on screen aren't nearly long enough, and if Andy Griffith doesn't win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for this role, I'll be greatly surprised and disappointed. 

This is a film as sweet as the pies served up and as bitter as a diner's overheated coffee. Not every romance ends in happily ever after; sometimes it is just a necessary transition. Not every film wraps up neatly, either.  Here, the film's conclusion isn't so much an ending as a final view of a stage of Jenna's life that will continue to have its highs and lows just as every life does. 

This is a film that, sadly, will always be bittersweet, leaving viewers to wonder what other works Adrienne Shelly might have presented were it not for her tragic murder in 2006. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has long had a rule against posthumous award nominations, but this is a case worthy of an exception.