Waitress and Knocked Up

Waitress - Waitress is the kind of movie that I can't imagine anyone NOT liking. It's a thouroughly likeable and refreshing story. It's cute and sweet and funny, really just a wonderful gem of a movie. Written, directed and co-starring the late Adrienne Shelly (who was murdered earlier this year), the film follows Jenna (Keri Russell), a waitress at a pie diner in a small Southern town who is in a very unhappy marriage to Earl (Jeremy Sisto). She's secretly saving money in hopes to leave him but then she learns she's pregnant (after one lone drunken night). Jenna is not exactly happy about having a baby but she forms a bond with her sexy yet dorky doctor (Nathan Fillion). Soon, they are having an all out affair despite the fact that both are married and she's with child. Meanwhile, back at the pie diner, her waitress friends Becky (Cheryl Hines) and Dawn (Shelly) are having romantic highs and lows as well. Becky starts an affair of her own with the cranky manager of the place and the unlucky in love Dawn meets a weird suitor who just may be her Mr. Right. Throw in the ever fiesty and adorable Andy Griffith and you've got a wonderful little movie. I'll admit it does drag a little in the middle and seems a bit contrived now and then but mostly it's a movie with a huge heart. It's as sweet as all those pies that Jenna makes during the movies (and if you like pie, this movie will probably make you hungry... lucky for me, i prefer cake). Russell is finally becoming the movie star I always knew she could be. I have loved her since her Felicity days when she was the poster girl for shy, dorky girls in love with boys who don't even know they are alive and Waitress is the perfect vehicle for her. The entire cast is wonderful and they take the already solid script to a really great place. Cheers to Griffith for being the perfect scene stealer. It's more like, scene blessing, if you think about it. All in all, Waitress is the kind of movie that you really can't help but fall in love with a little bit.

Grade: A-

Knocked Up - First of all, comedies should not be close to two and a half hours long. And the worst part? It felt like it was even longer at times. Sure, it was funny. Sometimes it was very, very funny. But for every laugh out loud funny moment, there were about five long, drawn out, overly cliched boring parts. Let me start this over... Knocked Up is a romantic comedy that is more comedy than romance about a hot journalist (Katherine Heigl) who has a drunken, unprotected one night stand with a dorky slacker (Seth Rogen). Eight weeks later, she finds out she's knocked up and contacts dorky slacker Ben in order to tell him the news and maybe get to know the father of her baby. In the course of the movie they fall in and out of love and have many a sometime funny adventure. Here's the thing about the romance angle though: I didn't buy it for a second. It's not that I don't think a hot girl like Alison could fall in love with a dorky guy like Ben because I totally, one hundred percent do. And Ben was actually adorable and funny and charming. It's just that, the script kept telling me they were really learning to like each other and falling in love but it never really showed me that. Maybe it's because I just don't like Katherine Heigl but I couldn't really connect with her character. The best part of the movie for me was Alison's sister Debbie (Leslie Mann) and her husband Pete (Paul Rudd). They are married with two kids and always fight, never want to sleep together, and just don't really get along all that well. Mann is hilarious as she accepts the fact that she's getting older (eventhough she doesn't want to) and Rudd all but steals the show when he goes to Vegas and takes mushrooms. All in all, the movie was good but by no means great. Perhaps it's just a matter of taste, though. I tend to prefer my comedy with a little more darkness instead of slacker/stoner/gross boy humor. Still, I felt the movie was very uneven and the big laughs really couldn't save it from the parts when it just seemed to drag on and on forever. As far as unexpected pregnancy romantic comedies go, Waitress is a million times funnier, more romantic and just plain better.
Grade: C+