Waitress

I love Keri Russell. I loved her and her curly, pretty hair on the Mickey Mouse Club and watched her on Malibu Shores. But it was back in 1998, my freshman year of college, that a little show called Felicity premiered. About fifteen minutes into the first episode, I was hooked. She was a freshman in college. I was a freshman in college. I could relate! Wow!

(Kind of like when you first got to college, and met people in your hall. "You like Dave Matthews Band? I like Dave Matthews Band. Wow!")

I adored that show. Keri was absolutely brilliant as Felicity Porter, and the cast was magnificent. You can never go wrong with the Pink Power Ranger, after all. I remember watching the series finale, in the spring of my senior year, sitting in front of the television and just bawling. It was so good! It was so sad! But it was over! And I was going to be moving on in a few short months. To DC!

(And then Friends ended its run two years later. I'm surprised I survived, really.)

I was annoyed to hear of Keri's casting in MI:3, as I just knew she'd be upstaged by Tom "Batshit Crazy" Cruise. And she was. And she died early. What the hell?

Since Felicity, she was fantastic in The Upside of Anger (see that movie, really), and more recently, adorably bitchy as Melody on Scrubs. But as soon as I heard about Waitress, I knew that I just had to see it.

Its theater release passed me by, but its DVD release did not - thanks, Netflix! Mike and I watched it the other weekend.

I really enjoyed it, mostly for the female performances. Keri was wonderful as an unhappy woman married to a miserable man (who Mike instantly recognized as Jeremy "Rolling With the Homies" Sisto), who finds herself pregnant - after of her husband got her drunk in order to coerce her into sex. He has the most cringe-worthy, most disgusting lines in the film, and what made me so sad was knowing that men like him actually exist.

The viewer is devastated for Jenna. Her life is sad, and it seems there is no way out of her horrible marriage or her small southern town.

I don't normally like films depicting cheating spouses, and I don't necessarily agree with the actions of the characters in the film. In fact, parts of Waitress left me feeling a little... creeped out. Jenna is no angel, and we're not expected to see her that way. We are expected to see her as someone completely trapped more by her emotional limitations rather than monetary ones.

Other then the semi-palatable storyline, there were so many bright spots in this film. The brightest was Andy Griffith as Old Joe, the cantakerous owner of the restaurant in which Jenna works. He is excellent and his dialogue is timed perfectly. He has some of the best lines in the film, as well.

Cheryl Hines and Adrienne Shelley play Jenna's friends and fellow waitresses. They both have their issues, but their characters are pretty much Jenna's only salvation. Her marriage is seriously bad. Bad!

It's bad, you guys.

But the film? The film is excellent. I loved it.

Oh, but how much did I cry? I absolutely lost it when Jenna's narration about two-thirds into the film:

"Dear Baby, I hope someday somebody wants to hold you for 20 minutes straight and that's all they do. They don't pull away. They don't look at your face. They don't try to kiss you. All they do is wrap you up in their arms and hold on tight, without an ounce of selfishness in it."

But that was the only time. You'll see.