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Rating:  - A few good laughs
I love Van Wilder, but this is not one I see myself revisiting. There are a few good laughs, but nothing to make me want to go back and rewatch it. If I happen to a catch it on TV I won't watch it again. This story centers around a restaurant names "Shenannigans", I'm surprised Hannigans or Bennigans didn't sue them considering what is done to the customers food. Actually maybe they did and I didn't hear about it. Teenagers may find this very amusing, until they grow up and someone does it to their food. I was once a Maitre D' so when I caught a bus boy spitting in the potato salad, the rest the staff didn't think it was funny and he was immediately fired.
You can say chill, it's a comedy, or whatever you like, the bottom line is people do this in real life and "IT AIN"T FUNNY!!!!!!!". So that said, if you find it gross to show people putting hair, spit, and other things from the body in food, you may want to stay clear of this one. Anyone that thinks this is cool should probably be seeing a psychiatrist. Anyone that needs to get back at people by messing with their food has a problem. The only other thing it covers is guys showing their genitalia off so they can kick someone else in the butt in a game of "how orignal can I be at showing them and naming that method". Fair DVD quality and no replayability.
Rating:  - Light On Plot, Heavy on The Funny
I think, to fully appreciate the hilarious plight of these characters, you had to have worked at either a diner or fast food place at one time in your life. Otherwise, it might be a bit hard to cheer for these guys as they do disgusting--yet always side-splittingly funny--things to the food of the rude customers. This movie manages to show the bizarre comradery, rivalry, and hilarity that happens in places such as these, exaggerating just enough on certain aspects to make the movie hilarious.
While there's enough comedy to make the back of your throat hurt from laughing, there isn't much of a plot to be spoken of. In any other case, I'd be disappointed, but this movie actually seems as if it would be better with no over-arching plot. The characters themselves all develop a little by the end of this movie, true, and one of the characters even takes a hilarious stand, but other than that, the movie is simply a really, really funny look into the day in the life of some really weird employees at a not-so-weird diner.
9/10
Rating:  - Boring - Not worth the time
With the film Waiting, I thought I had ordered a humorous and raunchy farce. Instead, I was served an assortment of shallow, uninteresting one-note characters prepared with a tasteless glaze of sarcasm and covered in a mound of genitalia references.
This supposed comedy was dull, dreary and, worst of all, not funny.
Otherwise talented actors, Anna Faris, David Koetchner and Wendie Malick, are wasted in thin characters with nothing funny to say. Luis Guzman is the only one able to generate any laughs.
Some compare the film to Clerks. The only real comparison is that the writer of Waiting seems to have lifted the character of Jay from Clerks and split him into the two busboy characters who attempt a pale imitation of Jason Mewes.
If you feel you must watch a movie that spoofs the banal and corporate theme restaurants, watch Jennifer Aniston's scenes from Office Space. You'll laugh a lot more and save yourself over an hour's worth of time.
Rating: - One of the most hilarious and right-on comedies in years!
There was "Clerks," and "Office Space," and now this. While there have been many insider looks into the ironic, satiric, just plain funny twilight zone that is American lower class work/job experiences, few come close to the above mentioned films. While I could relate much more to the clerical-oriented "Office Space," I'd bet this film does for the restaurant industry (and "service sector workers") what "Office Space" did so well for me. But I could relate to this almost as much. It's all just done so surprisingly well.
While "Office Space" dealt with distinct and very different "work-place" clerical/office environments and characters usually found in both, this movie deals with the food-service industry, especially that within the more seemingly affluent types of establishment culture. Still, despite the expensive looking and seeming quality dining experiences this film's dining business dishes up, like former treatments of this general theme, we eventually learn that perhaps one should eat out less frequently than they do, if ever. And if THEY (those who prepare and deliver your food) dish it up at such rather upscale places like "Shenanigans" in the movie, you may want to see this great film before treating anyone in such a place with anything less than respect and a good tip. From now on!
There are so many players here that it would be nearly impossible to straighten them all out and comment individually without writing a few thousand words. Throughout however, it really doesn't matter. Virtually every character and the actor or actress playing them, do a first rate job.
And the script and direction doesn't hurt. While one or two characters stand out, and at times present either comic relief or that of a more serious message about the human corporate working environment and the ever increasing need to always try to get ahead, the entire acting staff give first rate performances. From the smallest part to the majors.
The script is tight, very tight. There are so many lines, so many situations involving so many different types of people, but while some of the humor may be childish and cheap, everything and everyone is believable in a way and it all works as a whole. Especially for anyone who has ever worked in any office or other consumer serving field. This points to many rewrites, but that's a good thing here, a great thing. As well as the superb direction, fast, furious, and quick-paced, and completely suiting the general ideas here, without drifting too heavily into perhaps more downer, if realistic modes.
Regardless of this film's seeing almost anything corporate, low-paying job-wise as existing in some bizzaro world (which it actually does), despite some excessive misdirections and plot diversions, anyone who's ever held such a job in any way close to what this film constantly and cleverly shows, will find a lot of value here. Anyone actually who has ever held any kind of struggling, office or "service" job, should love this.
While the film rarely takes a breath from the continual bombardment of jokes, hit and miss, but mostly hit, throughout, and has only as a side story a more slightly more serious take on one of the employees and his own personal existential angst, even this aspect fits in beautifully, and with the film's fast onslaught of funny tidbits everywhere, even more serious turns only compliment the loads of humor to be found here.
There are plots and subplots all along the way, and all interesting, some of them seeming to even demand whole films of their own. For anyone who has seen this and liked "Office Space" and/or "Clerks," and liked this, or loved it as I did and do, this is a most definite buy, as it moves so fast with so many subtle lines and situations and interractions, that it demands repeated viewings to collectors with the money to add truly a special and totally unique modern workplace "screwball" comedy to their permanent DVD collection of totally cool flicks.
I only started watching this film without much expectations, on cable on demand, simply from the brief description of what the movie was supposedly about. Amazingly, I watched it through without hardly a break or pause, and never ever reached for the fast forward button. This is a really funny and at the same time, fairly deep comment on "working-class" America in a dining establishment, and while a lot of it seems a bit stretched as to believability, most of it does not, and for me, I'll forever think twice before ever eating out at a seemingly upscale such place. Let alone one of the fast food outlets.
A real instant working-class comedy classic, and great comedy in general.
Rating: - If you LOVE Dane Cook - avoid this.
I LOVE DANE COOK and I'd like to keep it that way. Unfortunately I watched this movie and it kinda ruined it a little bit for me but he's redeemed himself many times over!!! Not a great flick. See Employee of the Month, Vicious Circle or Tourgasm instead!
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