WAITRESS

REVIEW BY DAVE SMITH

Like the 2000 movie Chocolat, this film has to do with the healing power of food ...among other things. In Chocolat the delicious chocolate concoctions stirred up by Juliette Binoche helped cure wife abuse, religious bigotry, discrimination against the elderly. In this film, the pies made by Jenna the waitress (Keri Russell) seem to help her solve some of her problems. She gives names to her pies like, "I hate my husband pie." Jenna's two best friends are fellow waitresses played by Cheryl Hines and Adrienne Shelley. Shelley wrote and directed this film. It was her first writer/director credit. It also was her last film. She was tragically murdered in her Manhattan office by a 19 year-old illegal immigrant from Ecuador.

Jenna finds that she is pregnant by her red neck control-freak of a husband. She is devastated. When she goes to the doctor she finds her old doctor has retired and a young handsome ob gyn has taken over the practice. They immediately hit it off although both are married. The affair continues until Jenna meets the doctor's wife and decides she is not doing the right thing. She now must suffer the birth of a baby she just knows she is going to hate. However when the baby is born, a light dawns. Jenna summons the courage she has lacked to confront her husband.

This is not a unique breakthrough film. The plot is not that different from a lot of others. However the character portrayals are right on and Keri Russell is the glue that not only holds it all together but makes you believe there is some truth to this screwball farce. One can only wonder what Adrienne Shelley might have been capable of producing if her talent had been allowed to mature. One consolation is that, like most people who make movies, they become immortal. Their talent will live forever in film.