“Waitress” Smash Hit at Sundance Film Festival Fills the Bill

  As I said last Tuesday Night at The Gathering, this is a Woman's Movie...not to be mistaken for a 'Chick Flick' as some sexists like to put down movies of a less important nature.  All the women who quietly filed into the ladies' room after the movie's credits stopped rolling were silent, a few teary-eyed, but everyone sort of smiling like we were all in on a secret.  It was an experience I will not soon forget.

Perhaps some, like me, were saddened by the lost potential of actress-writer-director Adrienne Shelly, who was tragically murdered in Manhattan at age 40, shortly after completing "Waitress," but most were probably pleased by the very real and marvelous change to the usual plotting and ending many expected.  The end of the movie will not be revealed by me, but when you see it, remember that I smiled at the twist in the traditional Fairy Tale ending.  It just makes so much more sense--at least in Today's society.

Now, I have totally misled most of you, by speaking of loss first and humor second, but it's a wonderful tale of three waitresses at a Southern restaurant...okay, an update on Alice and Flo and the gang in Mel's Restaurant, but that has to be totally unknown to most young women today...so it was time for a remake of sorts.

The engaging staff is made up of Becky who is a bit daft and hiding a love affair, while Dawn settles in with a very persistent and definitely strange guy, and then there is Jenna, the one everyone loves and pities at the same time.  Jenna is married to a fellow played by the newest member of The Law and Order crew, Jeremy Sistro.  Hard for anyone who sees him as Jenna's husband to imagine him as a hero, but he is a terrific actor...so we'll give him a chance to prove himself on TV.  In the movie he never does prove himself--to be a hero, that is.

You'll enjoy seeing Andy Griffith (yes, he's still alive!) in a fairly predictable role as a cranky old guy who is the richest man in town...and only Jenna can stand to wait on him.

On the home front, watching Jenna create and bake fabulous pies every day brought back fond memories of my cousins' aunties who also created fabulous pies Back in The Day.  They were written up by Duncan Hines when he traveled through Pennsylvania, and some say they inspired the name for 'Mrs. Smith's Pies'...although they were both Miss Smith until the day they died, very well off--in a Pennsylvania Dutch kind of way.