Still Waiting… - 0 out of 5
Throughout my high school and college years, I worked in the restaurant industry and, aside from it giving me nightmares about dealing with customers to this day and an unending level of patience for those in the service industry, it left finding the 2005 film Waiting… to be funny. Granted, I haven’t watched it since that time and I’m guessing it didn’t age well but, for reasons I cannot remember, I recently learned that it had a Direct-to-Video sequel that was cleverly titled Still Waiting…. I decided to check it out and, holy hell, it's hard to get through. This experience alone is why I think that the original probably didn’t age well.
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| I'm going to assume that the production spend tons of money to get Justin Long to do an uncredited cameo and they were left with no cash to write a decent and non-offensive script. |
Dennis (John Michael Higgins) is a manager of the chain restaurant Shananiganz and he’s hoping to get a promotion to district manager but only if he can make the restaurant a success. Sadly, a Ta-Tas Wing Shack (basically Hooters) being managed by the pickup artist Calvin (Robert Patrick Benedict) is taking all the business and matters aren’t made better by the fact his crew is made up of psychopaths, racists and all-around assholes.
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| Oh, JMH, you are WAYYYYYY better than this movie. I get the need to work but yikes. |
Like I stated before, Still Waiting… was hard to sit through. Not just in a small way. It was EXTREMELY hard to watch. Normally I try very hard to find some redeeming value in every movie I watch because I am a full believer in the fact that everything isn’t black and white and I won’t subscribe to the thinking that entertainment is either garbage or great. I believe in the spectrum but this one had nothing about it beyond some hope that a performer or two that I enjoy would have done some amusing things. Beyond this misplaced hope, the film is a mess of cringe-worthy comedy, a story that clearly didn’t understand character arcs, development or the fact you need characters to be somewhat likeable to make your movie watchable, and a very unappealing tone that was essentially an apologist to racists, sexists and ableist.
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| Meet the openly racist character. Barely does his character learn that he's a piece of shit and the story constantly tries to convince you that he's "funny." |
If you’re a cis-gendered white straight male who regularly complains about how everyone is offended when you tell a joke, use the word “snowflake” as a derogatory insult, never left the hometown you graduated high school in and think Olive Garden is a fancy restaurant, Still Waiting… is the film for you because the comedy is so bottom-of-the-barrel that it is insulting not only to a progressive that finds racism and other forms of prejudice offensive but also to the very art of joke writing. Everything is low-hanging and easy fruit that the gags clearly required no thought. Ultimately, however, the inherent sexist, racist, Anti-Semitic, homophobic and ableist humor is the absolute worst aspect of this film. One character in particular is all of these things and at no point does he receive any comeuppance for these flaws. His girlfriend breaks up with him but the end of the film shows that he is still a piece of shit and never learned a damn thing. Sadly, however, the one thing that is the most rampant in this film is the misogyny.
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| Andy Milonakis returned from the first film and reminded me of the dark times when we allowed Milonakis to be famous. |
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| I wonder if Ta-Tas wings go right through your digestive system like Hooters. |
When I saw the story would involve a chain restaurant acting as a Hooters parody, I foolishly thought the film was going to explore the sexist nature of the wings chain and explore, in a comedic way, the degrading nature of the restaurant and how it exploits women. This movie treats its resident racist like he’s a “cool dude” so why the hell would this movie stand up for women? It doesn’t. Ta-Tas is treated like a great place even as it is showcasing how shitty it treats its women. Its manager; Calvin (played by Robert Patrick Benedict, a returning character from the first film), is a pickup artist who prides himself on using women and treating them like garbage in order to boost his own ego. A movie with a conscious would have this character learn the error of his ways or suffer a fall from his self-created pedestal but, nope, this film treats him like a hero and even is looked positively upon by the main character Dennis. Having a film that believes women are just objects for men’s lust and also having a racist character that is showcased in a positive light just made me feel like I desperately needed a shower after watching this utterly abhorrent film.
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| At least you're great as God on Supernatural. |
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| I will say that the bartender at Shenaniganz seemed kinda cool. I like his unkempt style. |
There are some performers in this film that I genuinely enjoy and thought they would at least be good for a laugh or two as they made this dismal script somehow work. John Michael Higgins is a very talented man and I thought for sure he would have made something funny in this film. Luis Guzman, always a great character actor, has the chops to do something goofy and fun. Finally, the very talented improv performer and actress Janet Varney plays one of the Ta-Tas waitresses so surely an improviser could craft up something or improvise a hilarious line, right? No to all of these. I won’t blame the performers because it is clear they were working with a trashy script and I don’t even blame them for taking the role because actors gotta get paid and eat too. It’s just clear that obviously talented people can’t make some turds shine no matter how much talent they have.
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| Guzman wasn't in the film much. I'm assuming it is because he did some scenes that were funny and it went against everything this film was trying to accomplish. |
Contrary to what some believe, comedy has a shelf-life. While some themes for jokes can be universal and timeless (like farts), a lot of humor can only exist in the era that it was created. We, as a society, are always growing, evolving and learning and that’s why a lot of older comedies can be hard to watch with modern day eyes because we now see how a lot of jokes were created for the sole purpose of degrading entire groups of people. Ignorant people have a hard time seeing this and being raised on shitty Boomer morals they often get mad when the excuse of “it’s just a joke” is no longer a valid replied when one is called out for sexist, racist, homophobic and transphobic “jokes.” However, that being said, I’m hard-pressed to believe that even in 2009 this vile material would have elicited a single pity chuckle from a more ignorant and dumb 2009 Rev. Ron. Still Waiting... is making all the wrong moves and is a prime example of a product failing at every single turn it makes. This has to be one of the worst comedies I’ve seen in my life…and that is only being partially hyperbolic.
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| This film ends with a post-credit scene of a character telling off his coworkers and proceeding to shoot them all before several topless ladies come to his side. The scene is a dream but, holy shit, this scene pretty much encompasses the fact this movie is perfect for incels and bad for everyone else. |
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