Forget wearing your influences on your sleeve, Rob McKittrick thanks Kevin Smith for making Clerks in the end credits, enshrining on print for all time that without that film his would not have been possible. Unfortunately, we may have been better off…
Taking place as a day in the life of the group of assorted misfits that make up the staff of ShenaniganZ restaurant (a ‘TGI Friday’ rip-off if ever there was one – the walls, staff ‘antics’, uniforms, drinks bar and all combine to evoke that venue), Waiting… pretends to being about the frustration of the service industry and life without motivation, but succeeds only in being a series of poorly connected sketches and a fistful of restaurant clichés.
Anna Faris, Luis Guzmán, Chi McBride and David Koechner complete the list of ‘names’ in this ensemble, but only Guzmán gets enough material to have any impact on proceedings. (That his character is only a one-dimensional, offensive sloth is beside the point.) Koechner makes a reasonable fist of things, but becomes uncomfortable when required to be more than the ‘angry, frustrated manager’.
That the best McKittrick can come up with is a genital-flashing plot device and the usual restaurant clichés – annoying customers, non-English speaking customers, the old ‘spit in the mashed potato’ routine and other such uninspired twists – is disappointing given he has evidently spent years working in the industry, if his tribute to his former colleagues in the closing credits is anything to go by.
Amazingly, in spite of all the problems with Waiting… there were moments I did enjoy, and occasional laughs. Ryan Reynolds, despite being on auto-pilot for most of the film, does have a few moments of mirth, and the showdown scene between him and Anna Faris lifts the otherwise dull midsection. These few highlights, however, can’t make up for the dull narrative and superficial characterisations, and limit Waiting… to being only a poorly disguised Clerks wannabee.