How ‘Waitress’ Perfected The Rom-Dramedy

Ten years ago today, the late Adrienne Shelly’s Waitress was released into theaters and promptly stole our hearts. Starring Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, and a hell of an ensemble cast featuring Andy Griffith in one of his last film roles, the film follows unhappily married waitress Jenna (Russell) as she receives the unwelcome news that she is pregnant. While miserable in her marriage and her disappointing life, Jenna finds joy in making beautiful pies and dreaming of the day she saves up enough money to leave her abusive husband (Jeremy Sisto). In what is seemingly a last attempt at happiness, she soon falls into an unlikely relationship with her married gynecologist (Fillion) and begins to find herself again.

The film is uniquely romantic, whimsical, and laugh-out-loud funny at times… but it’s also profoundly sad. It was marketed as a formulaic romantic comedy – its theatrical trailer shows just that – despite the fact that it is anything but. The premise, at a very basic level, may seem like the upbeat sort of rom-com that we’re used to – pie-making lady with quirky waitress friends and an annoying husband strikes up an affair with her gynecologist while pregnant – but there’s a lot of depth beneath the surface with this one. Waitress tackles a wide array of real issues like domestic violence, adultery, unwanted pregnancy, to name a few, and does so with a quirky sensibility that makes it all feel digestible and honest.

Many films flounder when it comes to striking the right balance between funny, sad, and romantic. The heavy hits feel contrived, the humor seems strained, or the romance feels out of place. Waitress, in all its sincerity and quirkiness, is able to weave between their lighter storylines (Dawn and Ogie’s roller coaster of a courtship) and the heavier ones (Jenna’s failing marriage and resentment towards her unborn child) with ease and fluidity. Russell plays Jenna with such a profound sadness that it’s impossible to ache when she’s on screen. Even in her most ridiculous moments – like the “Short Skirt/Long Jacket” montage that plays after she starts sleeping with Dr. Pomatter – our joy is short-lived, because we’re worrying about what the consequences will be once Earl finds out. It’s not that the humor of the film is overshadowed by darker truths; if anything, these scenes are more evocative of real life, because so many moments of humor are often acting as masks for the pain hiding underneath.

Waitress understands humanity in a way that most films do not, and that is why it’s successful. This little movie’s got a lot of heart, and it’s a heart that’s unafraid to embrace life’s littlest moments in all its forms. The emotional olympics the film engages in – jumping between goofy lines like “If I had a penny for everything I love about you, I would have many pennies” and painful moments of longing like “I could find the whole meaning of life in those sad eyes” – are a true feat of storytelling. Nothing ever feels hokey or overplayed, and all of the actors inhabit their roles with a comfort that makes it feel as though the roles were made for them. The real romance in Waitress is the love Jenna finally finds for herself and the life she can create for little Lulu. The manner in which the film embraces its ups and downs prove exactly why it’s a rare case of a perfect romantic dramedy, and bittersweet as it is, Waitress offers an enticing, honest slice of life – one that makes us sad that we’ll never get to see what else the tragically murdered Shelly was capable of.