Movie Review: Waiting

Waiting... (2005) 

Directed by Rob McKittrick

Written by Rob McKittrick 

Starring Ryan Reynolds, Amy Faris, Justin Long Alanna Ubach, Dane Cook, Luis Guzman

Release Date October 7th, 2005 

Published October 6th, 2005

There is an art to low or crude humor that makes it work. The brother directing duos of the Weitzs (American Pie) and the Farrellys (There's Something About Mary, et al) have mastered the formula of lowering the level of humor to childish levels but still delivering very funny movies. The formula works only when the lovable natures of characters and the pathos they bring from the audience is equal to the level they degrade themselves to.

The new movie Waiting..., written and directed by first timer Rob McKittrick, goes to new lows to achieve its humor but without characters we love and feel for it's an exercise in both crudity and futility.  

Shenaniganz is one of those cloned chain restaurants that pervades the parking lots of mini-malls around the country. Inside, its staff are the kind of wage slave drones biding their time until they graduate college, get fired, or end up in prison. Justin Long stars as Dean, a 22 year old finally confronting his arrested development. While high school friends are graduating from University and getting high paying, real life, jobs, Dean is wrapping up a general arts degree at Community College and contemplating the chance of becoming assistant manager of the restaurant.

Ryan Reynolds plays Dean's best friend and roommate, Monty, who is defined by his raging libido and rapid fire wit, essentially Van Wilder kicked out of college. Monty's job on this day in the life of Shenaniganz is to be our narrator without actual narration. Monty is training Mitch (John Francis Daly) which gives him the opportunity to introduce the rest of the cast and set the stage for all of the seriously low humor to come. It's a clever gimmick that removes the need for a third person narration and sets the stage for the films main running gag 'the penis game'.

Waiting... features a huge cast of well known and recognizable characters that include veterans Luis Guzman, David Koechner and Chi McBride; newcomers Dane Cook, Andy Milonakis and Kaitlin Doubleday; a couple of "Hey where have I seen them before?" types in Robert Patrick Bennett and Alanna Ubach; and established stars Reynolds and Anna Faris, the only members of the cast to have toplined a feature before.

Waiting... suffers the typical pitfalls of such a large cast, the main one being the loss of continuity caused by trying to find time for each character. The main story seems to be Justin Long's Dean struggling to grow into an adult but he is too often shuffled offscreen for his storyline to take hold. The only consistency in Waiting... comes from its series of running gags about sex, genitalia and the classic urban legend of the food service industry: What are they putting in the food?

Waiting... revels in the juvenile humor that the Farrelly brothers made safe for the masses in Dumb and Dumber and that was furthered by the Weitz's in the original American Pie which brought low humor to a whole new mainstream blockbuster generation. Unfortunately for Waiting... it lacks the elements that elevates low humor from mere shock for shock's sake to transcendentally funny. Where the Farrellys humanize the craziness with pathos and the Weitz brothers humanize it with lovable characters, Waiting... simply has no time for either. You never feel for the characters in Waiting... because you simply don't get to know them well enough and some of them you don't want to know at all.

There is something to be said for the economy of characters.  American Pie, for example, focused on four main characters and worked to establish each before delivering the humorous humiliations. These characters were familiar, the actors made them lovable and pathos is borne of that. Waiting... is simply too crowded to establish its characters beyond stereotypes and placeholders and thus we could care less when they are hurt or triumph.

The women of Waiting... especially suffer from the lack of characterization. Each of the ladies fall into types: the girlfriend type, the best friend type, the bitch type and the less pervasive lesbian type.  None of the woman break the mold of their character.  Even Faris, who gets marginalized early on, is given only one scene, a verbal showdown with Reynolds where she shows the comic chops that made the Scary Movie series so funny.

Another big problem with Waiting... is its look. The film looks as if it was shot through a bad lens. The look of the film is grainy and distracting. There is very little visual imagination in Waiting... which is damning because of the colorful setting which lends itself to creative set design. The film never takes advantage of either the restaurant setting or the condo set of Monty and Dean's apartment which also contained strong possibilities.

The best films combine the creative and technical aspects of filmmaking. Waiting... is in the hole from the outset because little care is taken for the look of the film and the various other technical aspects of film craftsmanship, lighting, camera work and especially set design.

Do not under any circumstance see Waiting... before you go out to dinner. Waiting... does for the restaurant kitchen what Psycho did for the shower, what Jaws did for the ocean, and what Silkwood did for nuclear waste. Heed the films warning; never send it back. The scenes portrayed in the kitchen in Waiting... are not for the weak stomach. They are also only rarely funny. A perfect example of the film's hit and miss humor, the kitchen scenes are either riotously funny or a complete strikeout.

With all of the things wrong with Waiting... it's still often quite funny. Even the lowest of all of the running gags in the film has its moments and of course I'm talking about the penis game. Not wanting to be too detailed because the film goes into way too much detail itself, the penis game consists of finding sneaky ways of getting co-workers to look at your exposed genitalia. Points are assigned for the various different kinds of exposure and punishment is assigned for those who fall for it.

As outrageous as it seems I know guys who could do this. Listening to the game as it is explained and watching it unfold I feared for the fact that I could ever witness such a thing, because I actually could. Uggh! Still I cannot deny that I laughed a few times at the horrifying ways that director Rob McKittrick worked this running gag.

The unfortunate part of this gag, however, is the homophobia inherent in its conception. Part of the rules of the game, as part of the punishment, is calling the victim a fag and the punishment is punishment for falsely perceived homosexuality. Though I know that this is not meant to be harmful, it is undeniably homophobic and plays to the basest of stereotypes. Attempts to excuse homophobia by acknowleging it only serve to affirm it. Am I being too politically correct? Maybe, but the joke is so excessively homophobic that at some point it goes beyond good natured ribbing.

The cast is a group that could really make a very funny movie but not this movie. The film's charismatic lead actors Long, Reynolds and Faris required more screen time in order to pull the film into the mold of a real movie as opposed to the stop and start episodic piece that is this finished product. The producers of Waiting... simply could not resist the stunt casting of hot comic Dane Cook and MTV star Andy Milonakis. Neither one does a particularly poor job but taking time out for them pulls the focus of the film away from telling a coherent story. 

Even with all of deficiencies in Waiting... I see little standing in the way of this film becoming a cult classic. Among its target audience of frat boys and service industry drones the film was a hit from its trailer to its commercials. There are just enough laughs in Waiting... that the core fans are likely to be satisfied and will scoop the film up on DVD.

The setting is so ripe for this type of sendup that it was very difficult for this film to miss completely and it doesn't. It does miss though and where it misses is in creating characters we identify with and care for. Without those characters all you have are a group of talented funny actors creating a hit and miss gag reel of grossout jokes, not a funny movie.