Waitress (2007)
Average Rating: 7.3/10
Reviews Counted: 165
Fresh: 146 | Rotten: 19
Sweet, smart, and quirky, Waitress hits the right, bittersweet notes through this romantic comedy through its witty script and a superb performance by Keri Russell.
Average Rating: 7.3/10
Critic Reviews: 42
Fresh: 38 | Rotten: 4
Sweet, smart, and quirky, Waitress hits the right, bittersweet notes through this romantic comedy through its witty script and a superb performance by Keri Russell.
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Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 396,842
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Movie Info
Trapped in a miserable marriage and blessed with the ability to transform her misery into delicious desserts, a small-town waitress finds her life forever changed by an unplanned pregnancy. Every day, Jenna (Keri Russell) ties on her apron and serves her customers with a smile, and every night she goes to bed knowing that she is one step closer to the day that she can kiss her scarily domineering husband (Jeremy Sisto) goodbye forever. A smart and sassy baker whose extraordinary pies are
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Cast
-
Keri Russell
Jenna -
Nathan Fillion
Dr. Pomatter -
Cheryl Hines
Becky -
Adrienne Shelly
Dawn -
Jeremy Sisto
Earl -
Lew Temple
Cal -
Andy Griffith
Old Joe -
Edward Jemison
Ogie -
Sarah Hunley
Dr. Mueller -
Darby Stanchfield
Francine Pomatter -
Nora Paradiso
Ethel -
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All Critics (170) | Top Critics (43) | Fresh (150) | Rotten (20) | DVD (16)
Waitress is not a perfectly cut, factory-line Safeway-brand slice. It does, though, serve up a generous deep-dish portion, homemade and heartfelt, that leaves a sweet taste goes down.
Top CriticShelly's film (regrettably her last) may be a fine folly for foodies. But as a fable of female empowerment, it seriously lacks flavor.
This bittersweet romantic farce teeters and then tips into precious, a forgivable sin once you know this sweet movie's sad history.
While Shelly's film trades in an especially outrageous form of girl-movie self-consciousness, she's completely sincere when it comes to making her heroine the irresistible repository of our sympathies.
This is an ensemble piece in which everyone is allowed to shine.
Russell is the magic ingredient that holds all this together.
Adrienne Shelly's lasting legacy is this exquisite, engaging film about slices of life, Keri Russell's luminosity, an unhurried narrative, Andy Griffith's codger delighting in schadenfreude and even Jeremy Sisto making his abhorrent character relatable.
Allergic as I am to quirkiness, I was won over
... Fillion offers up an endlessly charismatic performance...
Adrienne Shelly's last piece has all the right ingredients.
full of whiney characters that eventually make the right decisions only after an unprecedented amount of hand-wringing
It's a love letter of the first degree, the kind that rises out of trepidation and confusion, almost by accident, with a sudden force of absolute clarity.
(...) Si por algo será recordada esta película, lamentablemente, es por la trágica muerte de su directora y libretista Adrienne Shelly (...)
Waitress is a beautiful and poignant swan song for what should have been the vanguard of a blossoming career.
Keri Russell sparkles in this story about a piemaker who longs for something more filling.
Completely inauthentic in every detail--the cinematic equivalent of an apple pie from Perkins.
Despite Shelly's twist of disturbing fate, WAITRESS will be a memorialized nod of a little gem of a film that delivered a slice of pie to our hungry, entertaining expectations
I dare you to sit through Waitress and not fall for Russell.Her face is open like a baby's and sculpted like a goddess'.
A sweet-as-pie comedy that just happens to have a sprinkle of romance.
It's a small movie set in a small town, and features actors who were most famous for parts on the small screen. And it also just happens to be one of the more entertaining movies of the year.
Nothing can distract from the inherent joy of experiencing this undeniably tasty creation.
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Latest News on Waitress
November 27, 2007:
RT on DVD: A Warm Slice of Waitress, A Side of Futurama, Hold the Lindsay Lohan Career KillerThis week, navigate the minefields of the rotten (Mr. Bean's Holiday, Hot Rod) and the even worse...
June 17, 2007:
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June 10, 2007:
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Foreign Titles
- Jennas Kuchen (Waitress) (DE)
It's the apparently simple story of Jenna, small town southern waitress, with a god given talent for creating original and delicious pies. Stuck in a horrible marriage with an idiot husband, Jenna's saving money so she can bolt - until she finds out she's pregnant. She falls into a hopeless intense affair with a married young doctor, played with customary charm and intelligence by TV's own Cary Grant, Nathan Fillion. That's about the whole story, the stakes keep getting raised higher as the doctor and the waitress carry on an increasingly steamy affair just as her belly gets bigger and her husband gets more demanding and abusive.
The pies are a terrific touch, because the recipes are thematically related to the beats of the story (i.e. I hate my husband pie, crushed lumpy oatmeal and sour cherries, etc.). The making of the pies is shot gorgeously and, amazingly this device never gets tired.
I forced myself to watch this, because on paper, it looks like a cliched, gratuitously offbeat comedy full of faux folksiness and bad southern accents. It's far better than that. Director Shelley and Cheryl Hines play her fellow waitresses with verve and spunk, and Jeremy Sisto as the abusive husband may be stupid, but he's an identifiable human being, not a cliched villain, who evokes our empathy, even as we are rooting for Jenna to get the hell out of the marriage.
On the DVD extras, the cast all rhapsodize about Shelley's having such a clear vision of what she wanted and how she was a control freak for every aspect of this production. That is palpably true, and it's a tragedy that she didn't get to make more films. See this one, you'll be happy.