Waiting... (2005)

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Anna Faris, Justin Long, David Koechner, Luis Guzman, Chi McBride, John France Daly

First, the Lowdown: A 20-something ponders whether he really wants to be waiting tables the rest of his life.

Shenanigans is a corporate based “party restaurant” (ala Applebee's), complete with seating that centers on a bar, and random knick-knack detritus stapled to the walls. (Why is it that places like this have to decorate as if they've taken a nine-year old with ADD and a glue gun to an antiques mall?) But stalking the grounds like the starving predators of the Africa's savannah are the people who work there.

Dean is a twenty-something slacker who is sleepwalking is way through community college for that elusive (and somewhat useless) AA degree. His day opens with a meal with his mother, who spends the entire time reminding him that his classmates from high school are all moving on to successful jobs that aren't waiting tables at Shenanigans. His best friend, Monty, is also a waiter at the same establishment, and manages to slough off the drudgery of his job by having a snarky witticism for everything that he encountered.

Enter Mitch, a wide-eyed babe in the woods as far as the restaurant is concerned. As a new hire he has to learn the routine of serving food to the patrons and where everything is, and most importantly be always on the ready for the Penis Game. The Penis Game was introduced as a way to alleviate the boredom of their jobs and entails the following: a guy whips out his genitals like he's a cast-off from Puppetry of the Penis in the hopes that some hapless coworker will walk into the room and get a steaming pile of man-flesh in his eye sockets. Those caught looking are called “fag” and kicked in the posterior. Kinda like a fraternity initiation, only they don't sodomize you with a bottle of Corona as well.

Dean is approached by their manager, Dan, who wants to groom him for the prestigious role of assistant manager. This is supposed to generate conflict, I guess: Dean's co-workers see having one of their own being promoted as one step towards douchebaggery. While Dean sees some of the perks as being attractive (a 20% employee discount? Oh yeah, make that TWO orders of chili fries!), but also sees him eventually hanging himself with the tie of his uniform later down the road.

Since Kevin Smith's Clerks has come out, more and more people are releasing movies based on the “you think your job sucks?” premise. Most of my friends and co-workers have made comparisons to Waiting with Office Space. And understandably so, both movies have the fatal flaw of not providing us with characters but with archetypes. But where Waiting is unfortunately different, is that it has very little cohesion to it's plot. The director thinks that a series of kinda-characters acting out the little anecdotes you read on the Customers Suck blog is the same as a movie. It's not a movie, I'm afraid – it's a sitcom. While most of the gags presented are enough to evince a chuckle, most of the "humor" comes out as a desperate attempt to add more energy to the funny. (Piece of advice, you do that through writing not dick jokes).

The most satisfying moment of the movie comes at the end where Mitch the New Guy vents his spleen to everyone and calls Dane Cook a steaming pile of shit (and tell me, who hasn't wanted to say that to Dane Cook?) If the best part of a movie is that it has a good Network-style rant at the end, what does that tell you for the rest?

Line of the movie: “You're the coolest fuckin' guy at Shenaniganz! WHOOO! That's like being the smartest kid with Down's syndrome!”

Three stars. 15% is the minimum gratuity.