Movie review: Waitress
Waitress
Keri Russell plays the eponymous waitress and is outstanding. I didn’t watch Felicity but I can tell by this performance why she captured so many fans with that show.
Her character is in an unhappy marriage of the kind that turns me off of this particular institution. Her husband is needy, childish, and over-bearing. He demands her respect even though he doesn’t do anything to deserve it.
But, he does love her.
She has to turn all her money into him, but secretly—she’s been hiding a stash of get-away money. With her amazing talent with pies, perhaps she could make a life for herself after she gets away from him.
Life, especially screenplayed lives, however, will just insist upon obstacles.
Through it all, the story is told with a quirkiness that brings to mind Pushing Daisies, the now-canceled television show that also happened to feature pies.
Director Adrienne Shelly, who was horrifyingly murdered during the making of this film, showed a talent for creativity and visual panache in her shots. She also wrote the script, and within it, there’s a uniqueness to the dialogue while she plays with certain movie cliques. Sometimes these moments work, and sometimes they do not, but I appreciated each attempt rather than be annoyed by them.
I think Waitress is a surprising little movie that is worth watching because these days, so many movies all feel the same.
This one tells a conventional story in such a refreshing way that I can’t tell if it is legitimately good or not. I just know that I enjoyed watching it a lot.