Review of Waiting... (2005) by Markb. — 19 Oct 2005

In Wes Craven's current Red Eye, the customer service attitude presented by Jayma Mays' endearingly beleaguered hotel clerk can be summed up as, "Sir and ma'am, I'm really, really trying hard to do the very best job I can.

Could I possibly ask you to maybe slow down and lower your voices just a little so I can get caught up? Please?" In Waiting..., on the other hand, Shenaniganz' waiter Ryan Reynolds' philosophy is more like, "Better treat me and my crew nice.

..unless you want me to take your steak back to the kitchen and have the cook put a little bit...uh, shall we say, too much of himself into it!" (Unsavory, yes...but it beats the Flightplan airline crew's "Hey, some woman lost her kid! Let's have a quickie in the closet!") A definite beneficiary of The Great R-Rated Comedy Resurgence of 2005, led by Wedding Crashers and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Waiting.

..is barely a sprig of parsley on those films' ample plates: it's unapologetically sexist, homophobic, slides past sophomoric in the first 10 minutes and WAY past childish in the next 15...and with the exception of the attempt to imitate Brian DePalma's endless camera tracks midway through (with speeded-up motion thrown in), the photography makes some of the entries on America's Funniest Home Videos look like Caleb Deschanael ghosted them.

But the funnybone wants what it wants, and this rude, crude 1980s throwback succeeds in the only way that really matters for movies like this: it made me carefully time sips of my Diet Pepsi for fear I'd spit it out all over the couple in front of me.

In short, it's damn funny, but here's a litmus test for you: if you rolled on the floor during the girls' shower scene in Porky's, waste no time buying a ticket; if not, Elizabethtown is probably playing down the hall.

Criticisms that Waiting...is virtually plotless don't fly for two reasons: like Thank God It's Friday and Car Wash, it's a one-day-in-the-life-of movie, and besides, National Lampoon's Animal House, the granddaddy and all -time champion of this genre, didn't have any storyline either (other than Us/The Deltas vs.

Them/The Omegas), and it's still great. Obviously this is no Animal House either, but many of the running gags really work, the actors (including a surprisingly up- to- speed Reynolds, old pros Chi McBride, Luis Guzman and Wendie Malick, a hysterically funny Alanna Ubach as a prime anger-management candidate, and David Koechner--who looks and sounds a lot like Larry Miller but has better comic timing--as the restaurant's alternately villainous, clueless and pathetic manager) help immeasurably, and director Rob McKettrick's script even includes some pertinent and even poignant observations reminiscent of Dilbert and Office Space.

And if the antics of Shenaniganz' staff manages to convince a few audience members to spend their Friday night cash in a good old-fashioned mom-and-pop bar and grill rather than a corporate monstrosity like Bennigan's, TGIF's or Applebee's, McKettrick will have done more than just make an above-average raunchcom: he'll have performed a public service.