The heroine of Adrienne Shelly's third and final feature film is more than just its titular service-economy figure. Jenna, played by Keri Russell with a terrific blend of sweet charm and indefatigable cussedness, doesn't just serve pies at the local diner, she concocts them, and the many elaborately-named, innovatively flavor-mixing creations she bakes throughout the picture form a mouth-watering leitmotif. Pie is just the right food with which to describe this sweet film — "soufflé" has too much of a connotation of airiness, and while this picture's unabashedly a comic one, it's also got some substance to it.
Waitress is a paean to motherhood that begins in a panic over motherhood. Jenna is gearing up to leave her deep-south small town to try and make her name in a baking contest when she discovers that her good-for-less-than-nothing hubby Earl (Sisto) has knocked her up. Her colleagues at the diner — the sassy, Flo-esque Becky, played by Hines, and the cute-as-a-button wallflower Dawn, played by Shelly — are flummoxed. But they're not nearly as flummoxed as Jenna, who jumps into a very impulsive and ill-advised affair with her new obstetrician (Fillion) as she tries, with not much success, to figure out both what she's gonna do with this kid (whom she already resents), Earl, and everything else.
The storyline sounds potentially skeezy on paper, and it's to Shelly's credit that, via both her comic skill and her compassionate perspective on all her characters, it's both absorbing and easy to empathize with on screen. The cast more than helps; the presence of Griffith as a cranky but avuncular diner regular gives the picture a lot of credibility in the Southern-charm department.
The picture builds to a conclusion that wraps everything up a little too nicely, perhaps, but the last shot, of Jenna and her little girl in a stance we would not have expected an hour and a half earlier, is a keeper. It's even more poignant for those who know the terrible story of Shelly's murder in the fall of 2006, for the girl in this shot is Shelly's own daughter Sophie. It's an awful shame that Shelly will not be making any more films, but all the more reason to celebrate Waitress now.
