The bitter, vengeful world of waiting tables gets the Clerks
treatment in Waiting.... A new employee (John Francis Daley,
Freaks and Geeks) gets trained at Shenanigan's, a banal theme
restaurant where the bored employees play a game of flaunting
their genitals. The staff includes a snarky waiter (Ryan
Reynolds, Van Wilder, The Amityville Horror) who lusts after
the underage hostess; a waiter suffering from crippling pee-
shyness (Robert Patrick Benedict, Threshold); an oracular
dishwasher (Chi McBride, Roll Bounce); and a conflicted waiter
named Dean (Justin Long, Dodgeball), who's just been offered a
promotion to assistant manager--a job that offers more money,
but threatens to trap him at Shenanigan's for the rest of his
life. Waiting... is a loose shamble of a movie--the only thing
resembling a story is Dean's life crisis--but that's part of
its charm. It's a tricky thing to depict tedium without being
tedious, but Waiting... pulls it off; some jokes smack of
forced sitcom writing, but most of the humor feels genuine, as
if it came from writer/director Rob McKittrick's personal
experience. A future cult film. Also featuring Anna Faris
(Lost in Translation), Luis Guzman (The Limey), and rabidly
adored stand-up comic Dane Cook as..a cook. --Bret Fetzer
