Waitress

I saw another movie in New York City and the experience didn’t totally piss me off. So I give the city a temporary reprieve.

But before I get into the movie, let’s take a look at some trailers.

DEATH AT A FUNERAL–Of all of the previews before this movie, this is the one that I want to see the most. It’s the new Frank Oz movie and it looks really funny. It doesn’t hurt that it has ‘Firefly’ alum Alan Tudyk in it…with a British accent, no less! (Ewen Bremner and Peter Dinklage are also in it.)

It’s about a family in the wake of their patriarch dying and the trials and tribulations of just getting him buried. The preview starts off a little slow, but it picks up and becomes very funny by the end. I was totally surprised to see Oz’s name attached since it’s such a British type of movie. But it’s got his dark humor all over it, too.

GRACIE–A girl’s brother dies and she takes his spot on the college soccer team. Based on a true blah, blah, blah. No interest here. (Although, doesn’t Dermot Mulroney look old?

YOU KILL ME–Speaking of old, isn’t Ben Kingsley a bit old for Tea Leoni? But I digress. Ben plays an alcoholic hitman whose boss (Philip Baker Hall) sends him to San Francisco to dry out. There, he meets his sponsor (Luke Wilson) and and new love (Leoni). Looks pretty stupid, but we’ll see. Director John Dahl has done good work in the past. Hopefully he can do it again.

INTRODUCING THE DWIGHTS–A shy kid meets a pretty girl and falls in love. But his family leaves a little to be desired, so he hides them from her for as long as he can. Of course, she has to meet them once he decides that she’s The One. Brenda Blethyn is his comedienne mom who is about to become a star again.

This one, which used to be called Clubland (sounds too much like either a movie about clubgoers or an Elvis Costello biopic), looks pretty good. I’ll see it. Maybe not an Oscar winner, but it looks fun in that ‘indie/dysfunctional British family’ sort of way.

Now, how ’bout some pie.

When I first heard about this movie…well, actually I thought it was going to be a bad horror movie where Keri Russell served her customers up on a platter. Just look at her smile. It’s a little bit vicious, right?

Then I found out what it really was and I had no interest in seeing it.

Eventually, though, I started to hear more about it. First off, the fact that Nathan Fillion was in it made me a tiny bit interested. That guy’s just awesome. Then I found out that it was directed by Adrienne Shelly. Now, I don’t know a whole lot about her and I’ve only seen a couple of Hal Hartley movies, but I kind of wanted to support it just because she was a female director, a decent actress and the way she died was so tragic and horrible. She was still working on this when she was murdered in her own apartment. Nathan was on Fangoria Radio yesterday talking about it and the hostess, Debbie Rochan, talked it up as being an amazing film.

Ok. I’ll give it a shot.

Jenna (Russell) is a waitress at a pie shop in a small town…probably in Mississippi. I don’t think they ever say. She’s not only a waitress, though. She also makes a lot of the pies and actually created a lot of them. When she’s stressed out, that’s what she does: she invents a new pie in her head and names it after whatever’s going on in her life. (‘I Hate My Husband Pie’ is my personal favorite.)

Jenna is trapped in a completely loveless marriage to Earl (Jeremy Sisto). When she finds out that she’s pregnant, she’s at a loss for what to do. She’s going to keep the baby, but she doesn’t really give a damn about the baby because she hates the man who helped create it.

Enter Dr. Pomatter (Fillion). He’s just taken over for Jenna’s usual OB/GYN. He’s a nervous guy and pretty new at doctoring, so Jenna takes an immediate near-dislike to him.

Oh, infidelity has never been so cute.

Dr. Pomatter is married, too, but the two eventually spark a romance that brings a happiness to Jenna that she never knew was possible.

What to do?

There’s really nothing new here. It’s basically Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore for a new generation. Even the characters at the diner come from that movie and the series it spawned, ‘Alice.’ There’s a Flo (Cheryl Hines), a Vera (director, Shelly) and a Mel (Lew Temple). There’s a welcome new character here (new to the story, but not to film history), the owner of Joe’s Pie Shop, Old Joe. Andy Griffith plays him as a salty old man who seems to want nothing more than to bring a little bit of rain into the lives of the people who work at his pie shop. Of course, there’s a soft edge to Joe.

This all sounds like I didn’t like the movie, though. And, for about 20 minutes, I thought that I wasn’t going to like it. That first part is really choppy and nothing interesting is said. But, since nothing interesting happens in these peoples’ lives, I can understand where Adrienne was going with it. And as soon as it picked up, I started to really like Jenna, Joe and Dr. Pomatter. Becky, Dawn and Cal (the Flo, Vera and Mel characters) remain kind of uninteresting throughout, but they serve their purposes. (There’s one really awkward scene with Cal that really didn’t seem to fit the character at all. It’s one of those epiphany moments that just wouldn’t come from this guy.)

What makes this movie, though, are the performances of the two leads. Keri and Nathan really make you care about the happiness of these two people. I was a little surprised that I liked Keri as much as I did. Sure, she’s cute, but I’ve never really thought that she was all that great of an actress. Decent, but not great. Here she’s pretty great. And Nathan is, of course, cool as hell.

And then there’s Andy Griffith. Say what you will about his old show. Personally, I’m not a fan of the show as comedy, but as a set of characters it’s pretty amazing. He and his writers created some of the best characters in tv history. And Andy is a great actor. I haven’t seen him in very much besides ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ and (ahem) ‘Matlock.’ But I have seen his first movie, A Face In The Crowd…and it’s fucking amazing. He’s such a hateful asshole by the end of the movie that you can’t believe that Andy Taylor ever existed.

Here, Andy has some of that old edge back. Sure, it’s softened over the years, but it’s still there and he’s every bit as good as he ever was.

Even though this movie is highly derivative, I really liked it a lot. The relationships seemed pretty believable (although, what woman falls in love with her OB/GYN? I mean, honestly?) and the performances were spot on. It’s funny, heartbreaking and happily poignant, often all at the same time. And just thinking about the talent lost in such a horrible way will make you wish that the movie would never end.

And godDAMN, those pies all looked amazing!