
With that out of the way, I found Adrienne Shelley's writing in the acclaimed Waitress to be wonderful. It was her turn as a director that I thought put the brakes on the movie.
For those of you not familiar with the tragic story sorrounding Shelley, I'll summarize: On November 1, 2006 (well before Waitress was first previewed for audiences in Sundance), her husband Andrew Ostroy returned home to his Manhattan apartment to find Shelley dead of an apparent suicide in her bathtub, hanging from the shower rod.
A dramatic investigation led to a startling arrest - Shelley was said to have yelled at 19-year-old construction worker Diego Pillco who had been making a bit of a ruckus in his apartment below Shelley's. Pillco came over, there was an altercation with Shelley which resulted in her possible death. In a state of panic, Pillco then tried to make it look like a suicide. (More on Pillco's confession). But Pillco's sneakers caught the dampness in the bathroom and left marks - which led the police to not take the staged suicide at face value.

Jenna (Keri Russell) is a woman who creates magical pies for a diner off the highway. She has fallen out of love with her husband (Jeremy Sisto) and plans to walk out of her marriage. The diner is inhabited by her two friendly coworkers - Becky (Cheryl Hines) and Dawn (Shelley herself playing a fine hand) and a rude, demanding manager. Life gets complicated when Jenna finds herself pregnant. Having decided to keep her baby and finding her life barreling out of control, she then ignites an affair with her gynecologist Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion).

Scenes waft by in which the actors do multiple things without any attempt to pace anything. Vacuous interactions waft by draining the movie of much of its emotional impact. Even the Like Water for Chocolate-inspired pie-scenes in the movie failed to charm me - as they were meant to.
Besides being frustratingly uneven, I thought Waitress suffered from utter lack of chemistry between its two - individually charming - leads Russell and Fillion. If Russell had been more seasoned an actress I wouldn't have had a WTF moment when she begins her affair. Neither does Fillion give us any insights as to why he might be cheating on his wife.
Romances without rhyme or reason are one of the primary reasons I write movies off. As I did this one.
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