Waitress!

My review was written in September 1982 after a Times Square screening.

"Waitress" is a low-budget comedy picture from the team responsible for the successful "Squeeze Play". Only intermittently funny, the new film is serviceable in general situations.

Episodic in the extreme, pic limns the comic experiences of three waitresses at a New York City restaurant. Andrea (Carol Drake) is a feisty would-be Broadway actress working the restaurant gig until her big break. Jennifer (Carol Bevar) is a beautiful blonde fronting as a server while working on "how to meet men" article for a teen magazine, and Lindsey (Renata Majer) is a young girl who was kicked out of Troma Prep School and forced by her dad to work in his restaurant.

Getting off to a hectic start, "Waitress" becomes wearisome with its reliance on food gags, pratfalls , old puns and vulgar schtick. Pic bogs down in the middle for plot material and a romantic interlude involving cafe manager Jerry (Jim Harris), who is opposed to Andrea's acting career obsession, but reverts to sheer anarchy when Lindsey is put in charge of the eatery and succeeds in wrecking it. A very old-fashioned ending has all the leads' dreams come true.

Within a format which is closer to the sketch humor of drive-in films of yore, such as "If You Don't Stop It, You'll Go Blind" than sustained "Porky's" comedy, "Waitress" suffers from non-stop overacting. Although the leads are personable and in some cases attractive this is probably one credit they would like to forget. With more than 200 actors credited in the cast, most in bits, best performance is by Anthony Sarrero, genuinely amusing in a pleasantly overdone attempted cowboy style seduction of Jennifer.

Other actors simply try too hard here, with use of Three Stooges-style sound effects tending to overshadow any shadings. Tech credits are variable but adequate.

I bought Waitress! because I was interested to see Lloyd Kaumfan and the Troma Team's roots before the making of The Toxic Avenger, SGT Kabukiman NYPD, Tromeo and Juliet, and so on. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this movie is not as bad as everyone says it is. Actually, this movie is quite funny. It basically has the same jokes as The Toxic Avenger...just no gore. The movie seems plot less until we start to get into it a little more, and a plot actually evolves as we follow a wanna be actress and a wanna be news reporter. They both find love, and make it yet another love story, only a wild wacky one. The jokes in this film are funny for the most part, especially the "6 feet...and 11 inches" joke which is clearly the funniest part of the film. If you liked The Toxic Avenger, and other stupid comedies, see Waitress! You may or may not be disappointed.

This movie qualifies as a "guilty" pleasure...a loopy plot surrounding an aspiring actress and her restauranteur-wannabe boyfriend (and actually featuring some quality 'soft-core' sex scenes that actually enhance the plot/humor), intercut with some of the best/worst sight gags and one-liners ever filmed. You actually wait for the the next joke, to see if it will fall into one or the other categories!

A major complain is that the movie never really decides WHAT to be--soft-core porn, slapstick comedy or gag-fest. That indecisiveness really throws off the movie's plot, wherever it is.

You will never, ever order wine the same after seeing this movie.

You pretty know what to expect in a Troma Team production. I laughed twice during the whole affair, where fifteen minutes in it's nearing, it got utterly ridiculous, for 10 minutes, I mouthed the words, "This fu...d". Then a sane moment came back, in which I was a highly relieved. If you're not aware, Troma Team, makes these insanely stupid rubbishy movies, you so long for a Chuck Norris movie alone. But there is a kind of smartness, amongst all the inanity, which if you're a budding actor, who've hit bad times, you may want to shun away from seeing thus. The lead character (Drake) who I'm sure, would be in other TT sh.t is this budding actress, and of course she's a waitress, longing for that break, like many actors and actress's today. She's probably the worst auditionee you've ever seen, as she's really never been given a chance. The movie resembles similar scenarios in films, about how woman are reduced to unclothing themselves, and virtually used as an admiring piece of T and A, and Drake is hot, that's for sure, like a few who work in the back of her kitchen. Another waitress just happens to be a writer. So we kind of have like two stories, but if making reservations to eat at your next restaurant, reserve yourself the right, not to to watch this film, cause what happens in the kitchen, is pretty disgusting, where the film makers must be pretty disgusting themselves. A tried rubbishy comedy, full of unfunny double meanings and some 'What' the f..k moments?'' For the very undemanding. And whoever heard of a waiter serving a Rolls chicken, literally. 2.5/10

"Waitress" is a bad movie when judged by the Hollywood standard. The technical aspects fall short of generally accepted norms, the editing sometimes makes you wonder if they resorted to using what they had instead of the best takes, the acting wavers between inspired and insipid, and the writing cannot stay on track long enough to get any single aspect of the story to the front, to allow a single thread to connect the feature.

All of the above combine to make a lurching, bumbling, lost in the dark movie that just also happens to be fun to watch. It could have been better-- but a better film would not have been as good.

Waitress is fun. Not "PC" in any form, not a glossy product, just fun in the context of the time it was made. A bad movie that is fun to watch-- another example of the contradiction of the American Dream.