Common Sense Note
Parents should know that this film is full of teenage sex, gay jokes, and references to male anatomy. The main characters play a game where they expose themselves to one another and call each other gay for looking. A teenage girl is manipulated into sex with a much older man. Two busboys spend the movie getting high. The main characters also act antisocially toward their customers.
Families can talk about what they would do in Dean's situation. Would you stay with your friends or start a new job? Also, what attracts teens to these kinds of gross-out sex comedies? Is the raunchy humor necessary?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Heather Boerner
Graphic sexual discussion. Underage drinking and inappropriate sex. Hating your boss. Getting back at customers. Sound familiar? This could be Office Space, Not Another Teen Movie, even The Sweetest Thing. But it's not: It's a poor but sometimes funny amalgam of them all called WAITING. And if you're waiting for a decent movie, move along. This ain't it.
Waiting is about Dean (new Mac spokesman and Dodgeball's Justin Long) and his buddies at a TGI Fridays-type theme restaurant. While Dean, a high school honors student turned future restaurant assistant manager, struggles with what to do next with his life, his friend Monty (Van Wilder's Ryan Reynolds) is busy cruising underage girls, insulting a girl he used to date, and showing the ropes to the new kid ( Freaks and Geeks' John Francis Daley). When, at the beginning of the movie, Monty turns to new kid Mitch and asks, "If you want to work here, in this restaurant, you just have to ask yourself, 'How do you feel about frontal male nudity?'" you know it's all downhill from there.
It's full of stock characters -- the hilariously burnt out Amy, the lecherous older cook Raddimus, the contemptible customers, the pothead suburban pseudo-gangsters Nick and T-Dog, the ineffectual boss --and set pieces. There's the prissy customer who keeps sending her food back until, stepped on and otherwise defiled by the kitchen staff, the food finally returns to her in a way she can stomach. There's the tempting deflowering of an underaged hostess. There's the attempt by the boss to become friends with his employees.
Waiting tries to be everything -- a coming-of-age movie, teenage sex farce, romantic comedy, and worker angst flick -- and sticks it together with the, er, glue of "pervert" jokes and politically incorrect humor. Unfortunately, it doesn't do anything particularly well.
If there's any reason to watch this movie -- and that's a big if -- it's for Justin Long's sympathetic rendering of a guy in the throws of his quarter-life crisis. When his former honors class peer comes in to rub Dean's nose in his success, you want to punch him just as much as Dean does. And when Dean finally makes his decision about his future, you cheer him on.
Older teens who like raunchy comedies might prefer the far better American Pie.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentAn older man manipulates a teen girl into sex, much discussion of deflowering an underage girl, a guy and girl are shown in bed together. |
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ViolenceJust humilating games. |
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LanguageMuch discussion of male sexual anatomy and profanity. |
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Social BehaviorNo real role models in this film, except perhaps for Dean, who's trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life. He's kind to his girlfriend, but participates in mean tricks. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoTwo busboys are constantly high; underage drinking and drug use. |
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