"Waiting..." is sure to make you reconsider your plans to have dinner at T.G.I. Friday's this weekend, if nothing else. If you are truly courageous and go anyway, just keep your fingers crossed that your wait staff isn't Monty, Dean or anyone else from the crew who works at Shenaniganz.
Monty (Ryan Reynolds) is a horrifically vengeful, and sometimes entertaining, waiter at Shenaniganz, a neighborhood restaurant catering to Middle America. His best friend, Dean (Justin Long) is, tritely enough, searching for meaning in his life of menial jobs and ridiculous parties.
The movie opens with a sequence clearly borrowed from "Requiem for a Dream" (2000), but considerably less poetic. We get a glimpse of Monty and Dean's life of drugs, alcohol and womanizing, presented in an easy-to-swallow, "high school movie" tablet.
Next we see Monty's manager Dan ("Anchorman"'s David Koechner) assigning him to show around the new guy, Mitch (John Francis Daley). Monty blows through the tour, giving the impression that the locations of such things as the kitchen or the food are inconsequential.
Monty turns Mitch over to Raddimus (Luis Guzman, the head of Shenaniganz's kitchen staff, for his real education. Raddimus explains that the only really important thing to know about working at Shenaniganz is becoming adept at "the game."
The game is a central feature to the plot of this movie and is one of the many reasons why the film doesn't really work. The general idea of the game is this: one desires to drop his pants and force a co-worker to accidentally view his penis. If success is met, the exposer gets to berate the unsuspecting viewer. And, depending on the circumstances of exposure, gets to kick the other person in the ass. This actually does make for a funny scene or two, but unfortunately for "Waiting...," the joke is way over-used.
There is a contrived and predictable break from the sophomoric nature of the rest of the film when Dean has lunch with his mother. Trying to guilt-trip him about his career choice, she tells him about a high school classmate who is already a successful engineer, but Dean just leaves in a huff.
And here ends anything that could conceivably be called plot. The remainder of the film is spent meandering through inane bickering among the staff members and little anecdotes that highlight how rude customers are to the people who wait on them.
Where it has direction, which is very few places, it manages to be trite and boring. Even the best actors and actresses (which this cast is not), could do very little with lines as substance-less and characters as undeveloped as these. However, having noted this, it's important to give credit where credit is due: Dane Cook, as the deranged cook, and John Francis Daley as Mitch are both highly entertaining. Daley in particular gives a deliciously awkward performance. However, these small rays of sunshine ultimately cannot save this floundering movie.
There are, however, a few scenes that, while not Oscar-worthy, do elicit some cheap laughs. In one, Monty waits on a group of middle-aged women, one of whom complains incessantly and sends her food back to the kitchen. With an apology and a smile, Monty takes the dish back to the kitchen and tells the boys to "do their stuff." To "fix" the meal, they add all manner of nastiness, which of course, culminates in the woman's utmost contentment upon its return to her.
Overall, the acting is generally weak and the script is worse, but if you have ten extra dollars that you were going to paper-shred anyway, and several free hours, why not?
