Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a review of the upcoming character comedy WAITING... Now, the reason I'm interested in seeing this is only for the cast. I know nothing about the movie, but Ryan Reynolds is really damn funny, Anna Faris is adorable and funny, Chi McBride was awesome in UNDERCOVER BROTHER, Jordan Ladd is adorable, Andy Milonakis is crazy, David Koechner ("Whammy") has had a few great roles in a row and of course... The Guz is in it. Guzman! That's an f'n cast right there! Just watching them bounce off each other has my ticket bought. Here's MiraJeff with a review (and keep your eyes peeled for a WAITING interview a few stories up!):
Greetings AICN, MiraJeff here with a review of the new Ryan Reynolds comedy, Waiting... Writer/director Rob McKittrick's debut film isn’t a great movie per say, but it does provide some big laughs, courtesy of its smarter than average sex joke-laden script and its comically-endowed male cast. While Waiting… does borrow heavily from other, better movies, it’s mostly a harmless homage that harkens back to the classic comedies of the mid-90’s (Clerks, Dazed and Confused), and a bit of new school humor (Road Trip, Office Space). Only, the refreshing thing is, the story of the movie isn’t about guys getting laid. Sex is beside the point in Waiting… sort of. The movie is really about a group of friends who work at a restaurant together. They all share a bond comprised of annoying bosses and unruly customers. That’s why Waiting… kicks off with an after-work party establishing that these people aren’t just co-workers, they’re buddies. The experience of working together has made them close. Too close. Close enough to flash each other their genitalia without so much as a second thought, in a competition referred as The Game. More on that later.
Waiting... follows a basic 9-5 day at ShenaniganZ, a Chotchkie’s style restaurant, minus the flair. Our guide through this slice of the service industry is Monty (Reynolds), a smug sarcastic know-it-all with a real zest for the ladies. Clearly, the role is a stretch for Reynolds. Riiight. Monty is saddled with the thankless job of training inquisitive newbie Mitch (John Francis Daley), a wide-eyed impressionable young hopeful who has no idea about what it takes to work at a restaurant, let alone this particular restaurant. Monty makes sure to convey that the hijinx that are commonplace at ShenaniganZ are atypical of the average workplace. Sadly, Daley (the emotional anchor of the great extinct sitcom Freaks and Geeks) is wasted, as Mitch is given nothing to do on his first day until the end of the film where he breaks his spell of silence to unleash a tirade against Monty, hurling goodies like this one. “You’re the coolest guy at Shenaniganz. Great! That’s like being the smartest kid with Down syndrome.” Hopefully, Fox’s Kitchen Confidential will use his comedic talents more appropriately.
The meat and potatoes (protagonist) of Waiting… is Dean, who is played by Justin Long, of Dodgeball and Herbie: Fully a Waste of Time. Dean's mother is less than enthused that her son is a waiter and even more disappointed that he isn't actively trying to find a better job. He’s content with going to a community college and living off his tips. Dean is the film's straight man, a good guy, but a vestibule of bottled-up emotions. He has a loveless relationship with Amy (Kaitlin Doubleday), another waitress at the restaurant. Their relationship is but a minor detail, and frankly the Amy character should have just been written out, because she has nothing to do, and is the least memorable employee at Shenaniganz. She’s a complete waste of screen time.
The rest of the staff includes David Koechner (Anchorman) as the manager, Vanessa Lengies as a sexy, underage hostess and Emmanuelle Chriqui (Entourage) as the lesbian bartender who likens a penis to a shriveled roll of dimes. Robert Patrick Benedict co-stars as a total pussy who can't piss in public. He manages to take a character with a shy bladder, and make him into more than a one-note joke. Alanna Ubach wraps up the cast as a hilariously angry bitch who always serves you with a smile. Her character offers up some choice appetizers like “I fucking hate foreigners! They never tip.” She garners the biggest laugh of the movie when she finally participates in The Game. The phrase “bearded clam” and Aunt Magda’s tits from There’s Something About Mary come to mind.
The female lead and requisite hot chick role is filled by Anna Faris, who is basically a one-scene wonder because the filmmakers forgot to give her something to do beside look hot. Her shining moment is another scathing attack on Reynolds’ character in a scene closely echoes Renee’s attack on Brody’s libido in Mallrats.
Speaking of Kevin Smith, there are also two bus boys, Nick (MTV’s Andy Milonakis) and T.J. (Max Kasch), a comic duo whose job it is to act like Jay and Silent Bob, the redux. On breaks they enjoy smoking weed, sucking the nitrous out of whip cream cans, and passing out while holding each other with white foam on their lips. Very mature gags on display here. Though they’re saddled with lame 420 jokes and ebonics dialogue, these two gradually grow on you, and by the end I found them fucking hysterical. Stay through the entire credits to see “Nick and T-Dog’s P-H-Fat Rap.” I've seen Milonakis' show once and it was retarded, but I suppose he does have some appeal, even if he is a 30 year-old Chunk from The Goonies. It’s funny watching someone who looks like his bar mitzvah was yesterday brag about his insatiable weed habit.
And we haven't even gotten to the cooks, played with no shame by Chi McBride, Dane Cook, and Luis "I'm the" Guzman. McBride chews up scenery like a hungry velociraptor as he does his best impression of Chef on South Park. Cook takes his stand-up comic chops and applies them with gusto to his knife-sporting wisecracker, nearly stealing the show with angry one-liners. Watch for him mocking slavery as he takes food orders, hunched over chanting “yes mass’a, no bacon, course mass’a,” while he’s whipped with a dishrag. And finally, Guzman shows off his comic chops in a movie built to his strengths. While I can never get enough Guzman in dramatic films like Boogie Nights and Punch-Drunk Love, here he’s even better because he has the right material, which turns him into a tour-de-force of laughs. If you replaced the awkwardness of Chris Meloni’s chef in Wet Hot American Summer with sexual perversion, it would give you an idea of just how wicked the tone of this film is.
McKittrick’s film fires on all cylinders when it’s developing its characters and focusing on off-the-wall humor. For example, we’ll enter a scene at the end of a conversation, and Reynolds will say something like “…and his mouth tasted like buttermilk.” Waiting… is full of humor like that, some of which sounds genuine, and some of which sounds like McKittrick trying to mimic sexually-repressed white-bread frat kids. Who else would laugh at a game in which guys flash each other their package and if someone looks, the flasher gets to kick them in the ass and call them a fag. But for every obnoxious line that kills, (“Of course I’m being safe, Mom. I pull out.”) other gags fall flat, including blatant rip-offs of food-tainting scenes in Road Trip (French toast a la grundle) and She’s All That (pizza pubes). Audiences will either flock to this sort of dirty humor, or they won’t. Lion’s Gate has been aggressively marketing the film in college areas, but whether or not Waiting… is a hit may have to do with Reynolds’ star power. Personally, I think the guy’s hilarious, though he does rely too much on his smug good looks and his signature brands of physical humor and sarcasm, which see him acting like a cross between Jim Carrey and Matthew Lillard.
Ultimately, Waiting… isn’t a film that you should be eagerly waiting for, but it showed me a good time and earned enough laughs for me to recommend it to a friend of mine. Or anyone else who wants to smile. I’ll be back soon as I’m wicked busy writing reviews of excellent films like Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, and The Squid and the Whale, as well as an interview with Jeff Daniels, star of the latter two films. Till then, this is MiraJeff warning you, to never send your food back.
