Waiting Movie Review

Waiting

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Justin Long, Anna Faris, Katlin Doubleday, and lots more people

Written and directed by: Rob McKittrick

Rated: R for strong crude and sexual humor, pervasive language and some drug use.

94 minutes

Can you believe I forgot to review Waiting?

I certainly can’t. Especially considering that this was one of the funniest movies of the year to me. Pee-in-your-tighty-whiteys funny. Had to stop the DVD momentarily to wipe both my eyes, crying from laughing so much, and my nose, dripping from laughing so much, and various other body parts which will remain unmentioned because this, by golly, is a FAMILY blog, but I believe you get the picture.

Haven’t seen Waiting? Well, let’s see if you should, first of all.

I will tell you, straight out, that this movie is childish, it is rude and nasty. It is a big penis joke. It has disgusting parts that will make your stomach want to heave out its contents onto your nice hardwoord floors (I have a mental picture of your living room, yes…). It is men behaving badly and women allowing them to and did I mention that the whole movie is just a big, huge, penis joke? And by that I don’t necessarily mean it’s a joke about a big, huge penis, but rather a big, huge joke about…. Oh, you get it.

So, if after reading that, you’re still all, “Hey let’s watch this thing!” then I think it’s safe to say you’ll probably like it.

Shenanigans, where our characters work, is like, Applebee’s or Cyrus O’Leary’s, or Red Robin. Or whatever restaurant-equivalent you have in your lovely home town. Think steaks and hamburgers, retro cool posters and stuff like records, or hubcabs or baseball caps, or other unidentifiable “things” on the wall as decorations. Think smiling young wait-people dressed in low key, green polo shirts and khakis, bringing you drinks without you having to ask and happy to tell you what they like to eat here, and politely listening to you tell them about your Aunt Margaret’s 98^th birthday, and then coming back to sing for the old gal, too, some twisted version of the “Happy Birthday Song” that has hand-clapping and a lot of enthusiastic smiling, and you’re thinking, oh my, these people are so nice! I’m going to leave a good tip!

Shows how much you know.

Waiting is about that we all fear might actually happen behind the scenes as places such as these. Yes, the characters are seriously stereotypical, but come on, part of the way things get to be a stereotype is that they’re for real. And we all know people like the young-girl chasing Monty (Reynolds), although our Montys probably don’t speak so quickly, smoothly, mesmerizingly. Monty is in charge of teaching the new guy all of the ins and outs of Shenanigans, and of course we are amused and interested by the first question he poses to the dude… “How do you feel about full frontal nudity?”

The answer to that leads us to The Game that all the guys at Shenanigans play, involving, yes, you got it, full-frontal nudity, much of it, for the eyes of the other men, and kicking each other in the ass. Hey, I told you this was a childish movie.

But it’s funny as hell too, even, or especially, the Game part. I will say that to my dismay, as soon as my teenage son and his friends watched the movie, they promptly began playing it. I now walk around them with my eyes half shut, prepared to close immediately and tightly if anyone should be playing the game and I’m unaware of it.

We have an ensemble of your usual crazy folks; man-hating, fire breathing dragon waitress whose autosmile turns on as she faces the customers. Then there’s really nice, wholesome kind waitress who still has to wait on assholes, and slutty, too-much-makeup waitress who gets good tips from guys. We have the balding, wholly unattractive middle aged manager preening around the young hostess, who is all of seventeen. We have overly-anxious-to-please waiter who is eternally damned to repeating the same loser-loop over and over, hence never to get the girl. And there’s Mr. Indecisive (Long), Dean, who doesn’t know if he wants the position of assistant manager or if he should move on into other areas of life. We have the wanna-be-black-so-damn-bad busboys (one of whom is Andy Milanokis, yay!) and the kitchen guru, Bishop, who gives out free philosophical advice in a zen-like way and makes you kinda wish you had someone like that in your life. Best for last, Raddimus, played by Luis Guzmán, his sweet and ugly face familiar from so many films, Raddimus who is creator of The Game and king of the makes-me-laugh in this particular show.

A few scenes shot away from the restaurant are just as funny and awful as the ones in it, such as the dialogue between Monty and his mother, as witnessed by Dean. Truly great moment in passive-aggressive-mother-son-mutual-hatred history, I’m telling you. The movie begins and ends with a party- the interchangeable sameness of the parties these guys hang out at every weekend, proving that yep, they’re all losers, but they are very funny losers while they’re at it. Funny losers who know how to have a good time.

I give it four &s

& it was truly funny in a gross way

& the dialogue was pretty slick for such a gross-out flick

& it had Andy Milanokis

& it didn’t try to make you learn any lessons, but just make you laugh