Publication Date: 01-25-2026

Waitress (2007) review

Dir. Adrienne Shelly

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

Less than three months before her film Waitress premiered at Sundance 2007, director Adrienne Shelly was found dead in her Manhattan office. Initially ruled a suicide, a 19-year-old construction worker later confessed to the murder. At Sundance, it’s commonplace for a director to introduce their film with a few words before it begins. That wasn’t the case for Waitress. Instead, its premiere was preceded by Shelly’s widow, Andy Ostroy. I bet there wasn’t a dry eye in the audience.

One of the many reasons Shelly’s Waitress clicks is because it feels lived-in. It’s surely the story of countless working class women in America, working hard for what little they have, desperately trying to provide for their child, or their family, until some unfortunate calamity occurs, wipes out their money, and they’re back to square one financially. Consider the circumstances of Keri Russell’s Jenna, one of the main draws to Joe’s Pie Shop in a sleepy southern town. Not just a waitress, she’s a pie enthusiast, having inherited her mother’s proclivity for making the most scrumptious bakery.

Outside of work, however, Jenna’s life is a wreck. Her husband Earl (Jeremy Sisto) is a self-absorbed loser, and as his behavior trends towards abusive, she begins quietly pocketing tip money in case she needs to dip. But then she finds out she’s pregnant; she won’t abort, it’s not the baby’s fault after all. That doesn’t mean Earl needs to know. Anyone hoping this was trending towards being a film adaptation of the Dixie Chicks’ eternal banger “Goodbye Earl” will be sorely disappointing.

Jenna’s two confidants are fellow waitresses: a mousy woman named Dawn (the late Shelly), hopelessly looking for love, and a sassy gal named Becky (Cheryl Hines), who every woman would want in their corner. The trio keep each other sane while their manager (Lew Temple) barks orders. Most days, the pie shop owner “Old Joe” (a rare film appearance from Andy Griffith) drops by to make fussy breakfast orders and indulge in Jenna’s personal life for dessert. Most waitresses think he’s cantankerous and implore Jenna to deal with him. As expected, he’s warmer than he lets on, and Griffith plays the character with a worldly sense of experience and charm.

As you can probably tell, Waitress is a film of vignettes that paints a portrait of the American South in a similar way a humble yet humanistic paperback would. The weakest subplot involves Dr. Jim (Nathan Fillion), Jenna’s obstetrician with whom she becomes romantically entangled. I can’t figure out if Fillion is miscast or if Dr. Jim is just written in a persnickety manner. It’s probably a little bit of both, but when the scenes in which he was involved were the scenes in which my attention began to wane.

Shelly writes this story as if she’s lived it. Given that she was a native to Queens, her pulse on the southern United States is palpable and that much more impressive. Its whimsical tone would already be welcoming enough, but it’s the way Shelly sidesteps emotional meltdowns and mawkish catharsis. Instead, Jenna’s self-confidence is something that gradually brews over the course of the film, and the realizations she comes to feel natural and nuanced.

Waitress surely seemed to connect with audiences. A modest box office hit, the material was later adapted into a Tony-winning musical in 2015, which ran for seven years. If Americans would vote with their wallet and see movies like these in theaters, stories like this wouldn’t be a rarity on the indie circuit. They’d be the norm.

Starring: Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Cheryl Hines, Adrienne Shelly, Jeremy Sisto, Andy Griffith, and Lew Temple. Directed by: Adrienne Shelly.