"Waitress": review

L to R: Cheryl Hines as Becky; Keri Russell as Jenna; Adrienne Shelly as Dawn

[WARNING: major, major spoilers—both about the movie and about dark circumstances surrounding the movie.]

You get the feeling, after only 60 seconds of watching 2007's "Waitress," that this is a movie by women, for women. This is not to say the film is some sort of woke, flag-waving, grrrl-power manifesto about how all men are pigs, women are perfectly angelic beings, children are a curse who hold women back, or any of the other garbage being peddled by various parts of the left these days. Quite the contrary: some men in this film prove to be strong and compassionate, or crotchety yet wise, or weird but adorably determined. And while the women in this film are generally supportive of each other and quirkily humorous, they're not portrayed as perfect: at least two of the main female characters engage in affairs due to unhappy marriages. The story is girly in tone, but this is not to say that a man could never enjoy this film. I certainly did. It's more of a dramedy than a typical romantic comedy, but there are some rom-com elements.

"Waitress," written and directed by Adrienne Shelly, is the story of Jenna Hunterson (Keri Russell), a woman who works at a pie-themed restaurant where she makes miraculous pies and tarts that are the talk of the town. People close to Jenna realize she has a gift, but Jenna is modest about the importance of what she does... and then, one day, Jenna discovers, alongside her two coworkers Becky and Dawn (Cheryl Hines and Adrienne Shelly), that she's just scored a "positive" on a pregnancy test taken not long after a drunken night spent with her husband Earl (Jeremy Sisto in evil mode), whom she deplores. Earl, it turns out, is selfish, controlling, and physically abusive—a perfect storm of everything one would consider bad in a husband. As a result, Jenna feels trapped: she never wanted a baby, and she believes herself to be unable to escape from Earl until she's earned enough money to just bolt one day.

Jenna's usual doctor is Lilly Mueller (Sarah Hunley), but Dr. Mueller has very suddenly gone into semi-retirement, and she's been replaced by Dr. Jim Pomatter (Nathan Fillion), a shy, bookish, awkward man who acts somewhat stiffly around Jenna. The two are very tentative with each other at first, but when Jenna realizes that Jim appreciates her for who she is and notices aspects about her that Earl never seems to see, the two begin, predictably, to fall in love—or something like it. Jenna now has to walk the razor's edge that requires carrying on an affair in secret while dealing with a constantly jealous, suspicious husband who is always looking for an excuse to tear her down. As the baby grows within her, Jenna must also wrestle with feelings of resentment: she has decided to carry the baby to term, but for her, this is nothing to celebrate because she sees the baby as little more than another burden to bear in an already unbearable life. Jim is her window to freedom, and with him, she can dream of running away from it all.

Life at the restaurant means making pies; dealing with crotchety Old Joe (Andy Griffith—yes, that Andy Griffith), the rich owner of the restaurant and several other places in town; and helping her coworker/friends out with their various troubles and insecurities. Dawn is ashamed of her supposedly dowdy looks, but she gets pursued by Ogie (Eddie Jemison, whom you may remember from the Ocean's movies as Livingston Dell), a tax-auditor nerd who spouts awkward poetry and is head-over-heels for Dawn. He also says he wants to marry her. Becky, whose husband is a drooling invalid, is having an affair with Cal (Lew Temple), the ladies' ornery boss at the diner. Cal sports an ugly demeanor but has a kind heart deep down. All of these people and events form the crazy tapestry of Jenna's existence, with the dark specter of surly Earl looming over all the proceedings.

Overall, I liked the film, which was funny and deftly written. Even the comedic exaggerations felt somehow authentic, and it's the film's sincerity that won me over. To my relief, "Waitress" didn't follow the typical trajectory of a romantic comedy, and in the end, the woman didn't need to depend on a man to find her happiness, which reminded me strongly of the conclusion of "Begin Again." Despite Jenna's affair with Jim, she ultimately ends up leaving: Jim is married, too, and Jim's wife Francine (Darby Stanchfield) is actually a fellow doctor doing her residency in town. There's an awkward scene in which Jenna meets Jim's wife, and later, when Jenna is breaking up with Jim, she notes that she saw the trust in Francine's eyes—something Jenna didn't want to violate. Much of the story dealt with Jenna's internal conflict: her growing feelings for Jim, her intellectual understanding that an affair was not a good solution to her unhappy marriage, her giving in to temptation, and the guilt that resulted from going down that path (Becky, by contrast, expresses no regrets about her affair). Jenna's character is smartly crafted, and she ends up being a well-rounded person that you can root for.

Perhaps the one major flaw in the film is also its central mystery: why Jim acceded to the affair with Jenna. Jim obviously took a liking to Jenna from the very beginning, but we never discover whether he, too, was in an unhappy marriage. We see moments where Jim and Jenna both fantasize about escaping their current lives to go do something more fulfilling, but we never learn about Jim's motivation for feeling this way. Is Francine a cold bitch? Not from what we see: Francine seems like a good, stable woman when we meet her, and she and Jim together seem to make for a fine pair. So what do we make of this? If Jim is the type to fall for any pretty face, then he's an untrustworthy bastard, and the affair with Jenna is no more than an extended fling—superficial and meaningless. But Jim's behavior in his private moments with Jenna suggests that he really loves her, that he sees her for the woman she is, that he desires her happiness. How does this square, then, with a seemingly solid marriage to Francine? The movie provides no answers, so we're left with the possibility that Jim is just an unsavory individual, or he's so needy and lovelorn that he'll fall for the first pretty waitress he sees. Maybe this mystery was intended; maybe it's a flaw in the writing. I don't know.

That major flaw/plot hole/whatever aside, "Waitress" proved to be worth its 104-minute running time. Far from being a woke, man-hating manifesto about the evils of the patriarchy and the shackles of motherhood, it featured a main character who was determined to bring her baby to term even if she didn't want it, men who weren't total bastards (excepting Earl, and you'll find yourself wishing for very bad things to happen to that man—all praise to Jeremy Sisto for having the talent to make Earl such a hateful, horrible character), and women whose imperfections were very much on display. Although the movie contained some scenes of spousal abuse that made me uncomfortable (I squirm during almost any movie that shows men abusing women), the story made sense, the writing felt authentic, the small-town cinematography was beautiful, and the actors all did a fine job in their roles.

"Waitress" has the makings of a stage play. It's full of voiceovers and repeated framing events (usually involving pie-making) that give it the rhythm of a theater drama. And in fact, "Waitress" was remade into a 2015 musical. The movie received plenty of critical plaudits when it came out for limited release in 2007 after an appearance at the Sundance Film Festival earlier that same year.

And here is where this review must take a turn from sentimentality into outright horror. As mentioned above, the film was written and directed by Adrienne Shelly, who also played the role of the insecure Dawn. Shelly was known by those around her, including her adoring husband, as bright, talented and loving... and then, in 2006, Shelly was found in the late afternoon hanging by the neck in her shower, dead. At first, the police ruled this a suicide, but at the insistence of Shelly's devastated, incredulous husband Andy Ostroy, further investigation revealed that Shelly had been murdered by an illegal immigrant who had wanted to rob her. The immigrant, named Diego Pillco of Ecuador, was sentenced to 25 years in prison, after which he is to be sent back to his home country.

I read the above information when I paused the film about halfway through to look up trivia about it on Wikipedia. At first, I was intrigued to find out that Shelly was wearing so many hats—that of writer, director, and actress. And it was in reading Shelly's bio that I discovered the horrible way her life ended. Shelly was 40 when she died, and "Waitress" was her final film appearance. I couldn't help feeling crestfallen, and this knowledge affected the way I viewed the rest of the film.

Knowing this movie's background stirred up a swirl of emotions in me. "Waitress" will, henceforth, have a layer of sentimentality to it that comes from the knowledge that its director was brutally murdered, apparently three months before she would have known that her film had made it into the Sundance Festival. So while the movie itself ends on a positive, uplifting note, with Jenna moving forward as a single mom with the daughter she's learned to love and a restaurant of her own thanks to some money from Old Joe, the real-life situation surrounding the film shrouds the whole affair with sadness and tragedy.

I've spoiled the whole thing in this review, but watch "Waitress" with my hearty recommendation, and take a moment to remember its beautiful, lively, and talented writer-director-costar, who certainly deserved better.