Somewhere beneath the forced Southern quirkiness, the “Alice” diner shtick and the icky obstetrician-patient romance, Waitress touches on something interesting about a woman’s misgivings during pregnancy. Unfortunately, you have to dig through a lot of annoying elements – not to mention over-baked pie analogies – to get to it. Keri Russell stars as Jenna, a waitress at a pie diner who is appalled to discover she has been made pregnant by her lout of a husband (Jeremy Sisto, doing his best Neanderthal). At first she buries her frustration in her baking – she names her unconventional pies after her personal troubles – but later she falls for her new obstetrician (Nathan Fillion), a plot development that would be cringe-inducing even if he didn’t continue to treat her throughout their affair (which he does). Writer-director-costar Adrienne Shelly mostly hits wrong notes until the film’s finale, when Jenna gives birth. There is a lovely stylistic touch – everything on the screen goes blurry except the baby’s face – to indicate that Jenna has finally found a sense of purpose. If only the movie had found its own much earlier.
