Still Waiting… Review

So everyone probably remembers the Ryan Reynolds starring film, Waiting…, that was released a few years back.  It was the debut film from writer/director Rob McKittrick and as I recall it had a fair amount of hype upon it’s release — insomuch as an indie film from Lionsgate could.  Just looking at the original premise the initial reaction to many was Clerks. in a restaurant.  I remember first watching that film with a few friends and we all just couldn’t get enough of it.  Everyone knows or has known a character from that staff at some point in their life.  More importantly, everyone knows or has known a character from the customers we see throughout the film as well (growing up in southern Georgia, I immediately recognized — and laughed at — the male chauvinist redneck).

Waiting… also carried several of the same themes from Clerks. as well.  That malaise that people in their mid- to late- twenties find themselves in when they realize for the life of them that they just can’t force themselves to make a large, life-changing decision after they’ve discovered just how unhappy their current situation is.

Alas, though, while I could easily have watched Waiting… two or three times a day when it first came to DVD, I doubt if I could sit through an entire viewing presently.  Needless to say, I played that movie out.  I knew every line, every moment, every joke, every everything.  But it was more than that, though.  I know every joke in Clerks. as well but I can still sit through that film from time to time.  I had to ask myself why.

What I found was that Clerks., in the end, cared a lot more about it’s characters.  The characters in Waiting…, while memorable, where mostly there solely for their jokes.  Aside from Dean, there really was no story — just a day in the life of a bunch of restaurant employees.  And I suppose really, that’s all everyone wanted out of it to begin with.  With Clerks., though, it was always Dante’s story that carried over everything else, and with every customer encounter, it was his and Randal’s reactions that were most prevalent, not necessarily the encounters themselves.  Clerks. wanted it’s characters to be happy, Waiting… just needed its story to have a beginning and an end.

All that having been said, we finally come to Still Waiting…, the direct-to-video sequel, written also by Rob McKittrick, and directed by Jeff Balis, who was a producer on the original.  Now, direct-to-video films have a reputation.  You watch any direct-to-video film, sequel or not, you have certain expectations: poorer quality filming, bad special effects, cheesy stories.  What makes Still Waiting… a slightly better direct-to-video film is that the original film wasn’t about fancy directing, or cool special effects, so you can look at the two movies side by side and not really tell any difference in style or quality.  And all but a handful of the original cast have returned for the sequel as well — you can pretty well guess which ones didn’t return, though: Ryan Reynolds, Anna Faris, and Dane Cook.

And while that mostly sounds decent enough, the film itself just doesn’t hold up too well.  As I said, the original film was just simply “A day in the life…” and you don’t really care what happens to the characters.  So when you start watching the sequel and see the same characters still doing the same things, you really don’t care what happens to them.  Yes, there are many new characters in the film, too, but they’re there mainly just to replace the roles that Reynolds and Faris didn’t return to take.  Instead of Monty, we have Agnew, played by Steve Howey, who some may recognize from the TV show, Reba — I say “may” because odds are if you watch Reba then you probably don’t watch Still Waiting… Agnew’s character wants so much to be like Monty that he just falls flat, and sad — Howey just doesn’t have great comedic timing (though I suppose he believes he does) and the character is easily forgettable.

There are a couple of decent jokes, I suppose, such as the return of Calvin who, it seems, in the years since we last saw him, has become a massive womanizer.  We also get to see what became of Dean from the original film as well.  And then there’s Naomi, who was always my favorite from the first movie.  But while we still get the same actress to play her, again, she’s pretty well doing exactly what she did when we first met her, right down to the flashing of body parts.

So is the film worth watching?  I’d say no.  In fact, I wasn’t going to watch the film at all myself to begin with.  The thing that made me reconsider was when I saw that John Michael Higgins was going to play the new boss, Dennis.  Higgins won me over back when he was still Wayne Jarvis on Arrested Development oh so many years ago — the guys just got that deadpan acting thing down to a T, and I’ve been a fan ever since.  Sadly, though, I was expecting Higgins’ character to be so much more.  I wanted that obliviousness to his character that you know the man could pull off if the material was right, but it just wasn’t there — the material, I mean.

Yes, McKittrick returned as the film’s writer, but whereas the original film was an evenly paced “A day in the life…” picture, Still Waiting… becomes an uneven mess of its old and new characters and all that we’re really left with in the end is, simply, “A day…”

My suggestion?  Watch Clerks 2 again instead.