Waiting... (2005)
6/10
More than most movies, enjoyment of Waiting… depends on the viewer’s own experience and tastes. Have you ever been a restaurant worker? If so, you’ll likely find the film very relatable. Current and former food industry workers no doubt make up a substantial part of this movie’s cult audience. Do you enjoy lowbrow humour? You’ll find it in spades here. How much will rampant homophobia and misogyny interfere with your enjoyment of a film? Do you find the likes of Ryan Reynolds, Justin Long, and Dane Cook more funny or annoying?
I confess I found much of the movie funny and laughed fairly often. Part of that was the context: watching it with friends who had worked in the restaurant industry, had seen the movie many times and enjoyed quoting its more memorable lines of dialogue. It’s like the difference between watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show at home versus watching it at a packed midnight screening full of fans. An enthusiastic audience can make a world of difference in your enjoyment of a film.
Other than fast food places like Wendy’s and A&W, the closest I ever got to the movie’s franchise restaurant, Shenaniganz, was working as a kitchen worker and dishwasher at Boston Pizza. While I can’t recall specifically if customers ever showed up five minutes before closing time, having to stay at work hours after you had planned to clock out is something that will strike a chord for most workers. And anyone who’s ever worked in the service sector will be familiar with rude customers who treat employees like their personal servants.
Waiting… takes place during a single day at Shenaniganz. Womanizing server Monty (Ryan Reynolds) is training new employee Mitch (John Francis Daley), our audience surrogate to whom Monty explains the work rules, responsibilities, and culture. Representative of the latter, and the movie’s level of humour, is the “Penis Showing Game”, where male staff members expose their genitalia to unsuspecting fellow workers and call them homophobic slurs when they look. Sorry, the fact that characters acknowledge this is homophobic doesn’t give the filmmakers a pass.
We meet the other characters. Dean (Justin Long) has been working at Shenaniganz for four years and is starting to feel like a failure after a former classmate graduates from college and gets a well-paid job as an electrical engineer. Serena (Anna Faris), is Monty’s ex-girlfriend and is largely defined by being Monty’s ex-girlfriend, with her most notable moment being a scene where the two argue in front of coworkers about his past sexual performance.
Calvin (Robert Patrick Benedict) is a romantic who experiences difficulties with both relationships and urinating in public. Natasha (Vanessa Lengies) is an underage server who has a mutual attraction with Monty—the character’s taste for underage girls is pretty repugnant—and plays mind games with her middle-aged boss Dan (David Koechner) when he tries to sleep with her. Philosophical dishwasher Bishop (Chi McBride) and constantly angry server Naomi (Alanna Ubach) are two of the best characters, but sparingly used. Luis Guzmán and Dane Cook show up as line cooks. Despite Cook being a nominal comedian, Guzmán’s scenes are consistently funnier, either because they’re better-written or Guzmán is a much better actor.
Much of the drama, such as it is, revolves around Dean weighing whether or not to accept Dan’s offer of an assistant manager position. At times Waiting… plays like a riff on American Graffiti, both in taking place over a single day/night and the protagonist being a young man grappling with indecision over what to do with his life—Dean serving as the equivalent of Richard Dreyfuss’s character in Graffiti.
It’s refreshing to see a movie focused on the daily life of workers, a subject that is shockingly rare in mainstream films, TV and streaming considering that the working class makes up the majority of the population. The filmmakers capture the ways in which workers try to overcome their alienation with crass practical jokes, having sex or smoking weed on the job, and taking revenge against rude customers.
One of the more memorable scenes is when the staff respond to an abusive customer (Melissa Morgan) who complains about her food and insults them by taking her dish back to the kitchen, contaminating it with various body fluids, hairs, etc. and returning it to her. Writer-director Rob McKittrick based Waiting… on his own experience working as a waiter and he portrays the customer as overly broad and cartoonish. Still, Monty makes a salient point when he explains the kitchen staff’s philosophy for taking revenge: “You know, we should probably feel guilty, but she broke the cardinal rule: Don't fuck with people that handle your food.”
It’s emblematic of the movie’s characters that the best scene comes when Mitch, whose co-workers have barely let him talk over the course of the movie—Daley draws consistent laughs simply through his facial expressions—finally erupts in an explosion of anger at them and outlines their flaws. It’s funny, but for better or worse, this is one of those movies where the main characters are either unlikeable or annoying. Dean is the straight man, but his Hamlet-like indecision grates after a while. Reynolds gives a typically smarmy Ryan Reynolds performance in full douchebag mode, but at least unlike Cook, he’s funny and has talent and charisma. Faris uses her comedic talents to make the most of a thinly written role.
Waiting… isn’t high art, but if you can get past the homophobia, misogyny, etc., it delivers what it promises: a vulgar, unpretentious comedy and exaggerated snapshot into the lives of food service workers. It’s the kind of movie that’s enjoyable when not judged too harshly, e.g. watching casually at home with friends over a few drinks, and will likely be appreciated more by those who have worked in the food industry.