Waiting

This restaurant-set American comedy falls somewhere between ‘Clerks’ and a zillion straight-to-video gross-out movies you won’t have heard of (unless you’re unlucky, or, like me, it’s your job). The likeable Ryan Reynolds helps to hold things together as long-time waiter Monty, who enlivens his job with deadpan banter and The Game, which involves surprising co-workers with the sight of his genitalia. Over the day during which this is set, Monty is training up a ‘quiet’ new recruit, Mitch (John Francis Daley), who never gets the chance to get a word in – until the film’s superior finale. Up to this point, ‘Waiting…’ is a mixture of flabby, familiar gags about gobbing in the soup and actors who could do better trading sporadically amusing insults while griping about mean tippers. With its brainy slacker characters, restaurant politics and jokes about awkward customers, this has cult potential for youthful male restaurant workers, but for the rest of us it’s a wasted opportunity. An aimless, if amiable, comedy.