reMedia!

An entertainment blog that pops culture right in the kisser.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

film | Dull service

A bad-taste marathon about the thankless grind of the young men and women in the tip-dependent food-service industry, WAITING ... does for restaurants with a bunch of tacky crap plastered on the walls what Office Space did for the white-collar workplace — just with a bunch of lowbrow dick jokes in place of razor-sharp observational wit that's honest to the point of discomfort. It's a lousy trade, and one that seals Waiting's inevitable fate of midnight airings on Comedy Central, which, given the high turnaround and dwindling popularity of the bathroom-humor genre, should be within six months or so.

Ryan Reynolds, an actor who's never met a line of dialogue he couldn't transform into a verbal smirk, plays a smartass waiter — not to be confused with his smartass action hero in Blade: Trinity, or his smartass B.M.O.C. in Van Wilder, or his three-year stint as a garden-variety smartass on TV's Two Guys and a Girl — at Shenaniganz, an Applebee's-ish chain where the customers are irritating jerks and the management ain't far behind. Reynolds and crew's respite of choice: the penis game, a sophomoric sort of show-and-tell in which you try to catch your coworker's attention by flashing your contorted genitals at them. Since a majority of the (unfunny) gags involve men displaying their privates for other men, then, of course, calling them fags when they inadvertently look, Waiting winds up with a subtext that's distractingly ... how to put this? Um, homophoberotic?

The film threatens to actually go somewhere or say something on the rare occasion it strays from its tiresome preoccupation with the male anatomy, especially during scenes in which Reynolds' endearingly mopey coworker/buddy (Jeepers Creepers' Justin Long) considers less dead-end career opportunities. Mostly, though, it just drowns an admittedly eclectic ensemble cast — Anna Faris (Scary Movie), Chi McBride (Boston Public), indie-flick mainstays Luis Guzmán and Alanna Ubach, and comedian du jour Dane Cook — in desperate, paint-by-number gross-outs that ask viewers to believe dining patrons would mistake pubic hair for alfalfa sprouts. Mauvais appétit. C-

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