Garçonete

Ever since the Felicity days I've loved Keri Russell, so I was excited to see a screening of this in Santa Monica a week or so ago. I also have enjoyed Nathan Fillion in Serenity and the short-lived show Firefly that preceded that. But even with those expectations I was pleasantly surprised with this movie. It seems like in the past few years movies have become (or maybe they have always been) incredibly predictable. You go see a romantic comedy and it's almost like you can write the next line. I don't know about you, but I kind of like not knowing what is going to come next. That is part of the intrigue. The characters in this movie were diverse, funny, and completely endearing. In Waitress the dialogue is surprising and different. I really enjoyed the quirkiness of the characters. The crowd I viewed this movie with spanned many generations and it seemed to me that nearly everyone was laughing and enjoying themselves. I would recommend this to guys, girls, whoever...if you go in thinking it is going to be like every other movie you will really be happy when you leave the theater. I am definitely going to see it again when it is released this weekend.

I thought this was a wonderful feel good movie. It developed the characters well, especially Keri Russell's (Jenna). Thanks for making a fun movie that's not afraid to show real 'flawed' people in real situations!! I would recommend this movie to anyone who is sick of phony perfect main stream characters that really don't have any problems. The late Adrienne Shelly did a great job directing and acting in a supporting role. Cheryl Hines adds her great comedic flare! She's also good in Scrubs. I'm glad to see Keri acting in a main role again. She's such a naturally lovable personality on screen as she was in the TV show Felicity. This movie's perfectly fitting since she is currently pregnant! GO SEE THIS MOVIE!!

I wasn't looking forward to this movie... I went because it was a free preview and more importantly to support Nathan Fillion. It was a lot better than I expected. Nathan was great of course - all of his nervous business was hilarious. It was fun to see him playing a sensitive guy. And I loved Cheryl Hines.

I enjoyed the story a lot, although it does tend to get a little cloying. There's plenty of acid humor to balance it out.

I was hysterical crying at the end of the film, thinking what a horrible tragedy it is that Adrienne Shelly won't be making any more films. She definitely had a lot of talent - I can't get her "Gonna Make a Pie" song out of my head.

Waitress is a great, funny movie starring Keri Russell as a small-town waitress who discovers that she's pregnant just as she's planning to leave her jealous, controlling husband. The typical Hollywood approach for a movie like this would be to film it in ultra-serious "movie of the week" mode, but writer/director/actor Adrienne Shelly chose to tell her story in an extremely stylized, almost fairy-tale style. The stylized dialogue, super-sharp photography and primary-color palette even reminded me of the movies of Joel & Ethan Coen at times, but in the end, this movie packs an emotional punch that the Coen brothers have rarely achieved. It also features a brilliant (and brilliantly human) performance by Andy Griffith as the horny old geezer who owns the diner where Russell works.

This movie has a good chance at achieving a Little Miss Sunshine-style breakout this year. It's funny, quirky and honestly touching. Waitress stands as a fine legacy for Adrienne Shelly, but if things had been different, it could have been the movie that launched her into the mainstream instead of her swan song.

Some of my friends ask me why I watch so much trash. Why I spend so much time with stuff that doesn't seem important. Here's one reason why. Sometimes an apparently offhand movie, made for simple consumption will surprise you.

This is being celebrated as a quirky little comedy with serious overtones. According to the expected date formula, it ends happily.

But that's not what I saw. I saw a serious work, by a serious young artist that I would like to see more of. I saw Hartley's influence without knowing the background. If you don't know Hartley, he's a Canadian filmmaker that makes small films. They are called quirky by mainstream movie reviewers. What else are they to say? Its a catchall notion that signifies something that works by using unconventional means but the reviewer cannot say why.

Hartley's films are highly abstract. They are often called stylized, but that usually applies to theatrical conventions. Hartley abstracts in a different dimension of his own. Its abstraction, not simplification. And it usually works because he gets actors that know how to collaborate in it well.

One of these was Adrianne Shelly. A redhead.

She took that level and type of abstraction and did something Hartley couldn't do: she folded her own life into the thing. The story is about her, her marriage and pregnancy. It was written while she was pregnant and at the end features her own daughter as the result of that pregnancy. She writes, directs and acts, but the role she has chosen is not the central one. The narrative stance is as the observer. All the abstraction is done on the observer side.

Its amazingly effective and consistent.

One device that works rather well is how her own approach to the film deviates from the norm. (The norm here is set in the first few minutes as a date movie.) She folds that into how her character deviates from the norm in designing and making pies. The diner is conflated into a theater, with poetry seductions, affairs, a wedding.

Its where we see the small, important and original work of Hartley blossom.

(The filmmaker was murdered before seeing the film in theaters.)

See this. Its good, even the use of Andy Griffith. And the small (one scene) but important role of the other redhead.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.