**½/****
starring Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Jeremy Sisto, Adrienne Shelly
written and directed by Adrienne Shelly
by Ian Pugh It takes place in a Mayberry-like Southern landscape and features Andy Griffith himself as a sweet old man with a grumpy façade, so it probably goes without saying that Waitress has the tendency to be a little too syrupy for its own good. But Adrienne Shelly's final film as writer, director, and actress collects its down-home '50s romantic comedy stylings and silly pie-recipe jokes into something that can be genuinely affecting when it tries–and if, through its mawkishness, it reveals Nathan Fillion as too charming to be restricted to his usual genre-picture stomping grounds, then so be it. The film sees the titular greasy-spoon server and master pie-baker, Jenna (Keri Russell), attempting to find a way out of her loveless marriage and dead-end job after discovering she's pregnant; she soon embroils herself in an affair with the new town doctor (Fillion). A lot of goofy Southern stereotypes follow (the silliest and most inconsequential of which a slow-witted, well-meaning stalker (Eddie Jemison) eventually paired up with Shelly's character, a fellow waitress), but credit this film for having the self-awareness to at least attempt to examine what goes into them: even as he is casually abusive in his psychological dominance over his wife, Jenna's hick husband (Jeremy Sisto, never straying too far from "Six Feet Under"'s bipolar Billy) is portrayed as such a pathetic ball of self-loathing that it's impossible to truly demonize him. It's an admirable move that demonstrates the real horror of Jenna's plight without turning it into an overbearing Cinderella scenario–the idea that one shouldn't have to be confronted with some cliché Hell-on-earth to be compelled to break away from an unhealthy/dangerous situation and look for bigger and brighter things.
