Midweek Mention... Waiting

Waiting

Sidey: Chris nominated some content for this week, but hopefully he's okay, but he's not here.

Reegs: No.

Sidey: No. That's a slight concern.

Dan: Yeah. Well, maybe he's in a restaurant just , waiting to be served

Sidey: Possibly, let's hope so. Yeah, he's, he's had a lot of experience in the hospitality industry. So I think that was what inspired this list. And he asked us to watch for our midweek. It's a film called waiting, which was a new one on me. looking into it. Good cast, real good cast. Louis

Reegs: Faris Ryan Reynolds, Louise Guzman. Yeah, I was pleased to see him.

I like him.

Sidey: Yeah. And Justin Long.

Dan: And i'd seen this come up a couple of times in my feed and

Sidey: right. But I

Dan: but I hadn't clicked on

Sidey: No.

Dan: It's got a poster where there's you know All those characters in waiting uniform sticking out the front you think they look young They look a lot younger than they do now. So it's obviously one of ryan reynolds.

What earlier films? It's

Sidey: And on Wikipedia, it describes it as a black comedy.

I don't know that there's any

Dan: Yeah, it's Gross Comedy

Reegs: Yeah.

it's more gross out

Sidey: we'll get into it and when we're watching it, the credits, you know, it's giving you the cast. It's also got John Francis Daily who I instantly recognized because we were big fans of Bones back in the day and he was one of the Actors in Bones, so we were excited to see him and it the story is effectively his first day The film takes place over one day At a restaurant.

It's a franchise restaurant called

Reegs: Shenanigans, yeah. The decor of, which is very odd.

Sidey: And It was I was reading into it. It was actually a real restaurant that they had Repurposed because I guess they couldn't use the real name of the place so that you know it was a real place that they'd rebranded as shenanigans but it was an actual franchise. It's kind of sort of reminiscent, I think, of Office Space, you know, the one that Jennifer Aniston is a waitress in.

But yeah, it had

occasional

bits of sports memorabilia on some of the walls and

Reegs: yeah, it stuffed animals, a

brain there was some really weird shit, some TNT and stuff. It was like all these bizarre, sort of mishmash themed

Sidey: Everything they could find in the studio lost and

Reegs: Yeah, just all in one place.

Dan: Shenanigans.

Sidey: and so the the the crux of it is Ryan Reynolds taking John Francis Daly's character. I don't know like their character names are really kind of irrelevant through his initiation his first day of what it is to work to be a waiter waitress in a busy yeah you know this is how we do it.

This is what we do, but not just the actual waiting tables and interacting with the dining room that the kitchen staff. It was more. Focused on all the witty banter and the amusing games that they played

Dan: And

Reegs: So a good example of the sort of witty banter that you might find in this movie is in really Monty Ryan Reynolds introduction to his character is when he comes on to an underage girl at the he's the sort of hostess. The thing, and there will be a recurring subplot where he talks graphically about wanting to deflower her, but I mean,

she's 18 next week

Dan: he's not sure

Reegs: sort of a challenge.

Dan: not sure he can hold on.

Yeah.

Reegs: yeah. Anyway, he, he says, he takes the new guy, whatever his fucking name is. He says the number one thing I can train everything you need to know about this, but the number one question in the world is how do you feel about frontal male nudity? Because they play this game and this was the, one of the elements of the movie that I did enjoy.

They play this game where if you're caught, see, like, you, you sort of expose yourself. Yeah, just that. You expose yourself and if you accidentally catch a glimpse of somebody's exposed junk then you are of course

Dan: Awarded a kick up the arse. And depending on how they've arranged that junk, and there's various different

Positions and things one of them's called the

Reegs: The bat

the bat wing which is a kind of stretchy thing. I think you can sort of... You ever done that one?

Dan: there's one. He, he talks about tucking,

Reegs: saying No,

Sidey: no.

No, there's loads of stories about that from Pete Stagg do.

Reegs: What? Bat wings and, yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: It's like chicken skin, isn't it?

When you put,

Sidey: Yeah, yes, exactly like that, yeah.

Dan: it. So the, there's that one and the other one was from behind putting every, tucking it all behind, wasn't it? And and then getting 'em to walk through the door just to that moment where

Sidey: the Buffalo Bill. Yeah. The

Dan: it. The Buffalo Bill, I mean. Yeah. Yeah. So that was the, the games they play in the restaurant behind the, the scenes.

And was this.

Sidey: Yeah. They Ryan Reynolds cuts him off. Yeah. All the time. And then on the, on the flip side of this, what, what simultaneously is happening is that Justin Long's character Dean, he.

He seems to be sort of coming to it. He's done four years, I think. And he's sort of thinking about, well, I can't be here forever, I need to come and

Reegs: Well, he's got a mate. His mother,

Sidey: his mother is telling him, sort of lecturing him, that one of his friends, or someone that he went to high school with, has now just graduated as, as a,

Dan: right,

Reegs: He's got a mechanical electrical engineering or something degree. And yeah, he's starting to make Dean think about where he is in life

Sidey: And so on the same day, he's actually offered a promotion at the restaurant to become the assistant manager.

But he's like,

Reegs: And the manager is oh, David. What's his chops? Yeah. From the office.

Sidey: Whammy from,

Dan: Anchorman as well, isn't he? Yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: He, so, Dean's thinking, well, if I take...

And this is basically me for life, you know, and so he's, he's conflicted

Dan: And, and yeah, he's the, the current guy, anchorman guy, he's he's trying to sell it, isn't he saying, you know, pretty good benefits, pretty good power, you know, you get the power of it all. And it's something that he, he thrives on running a tight ship. Where's every, everything's going on behind his back, but

Reegs: The

aggressively lesbian waitress Natasha, is it or something? She, she

Sidey: She overhears

Reegs: it, doesn't she?

Dan: Yeah, and

Sidey: She's irate about it.

Reegs: some tension 'cause she tells the rest of the group as well,

Sidey: She tells the rest of the group as well. Yeah, so they're, you know, he becomes the enemy effectively. If he, if he's not one of the crew anymore, if he's now management, then he'll be, he'll be the enemy and that will upset the

Dan: Well, that's it. He, he comes back and they're all waiting and they go, anything, everything okay?

What was all that about? And he goes, Oh, nothing. And of course they all know. So they instantly kind of grown and think, Oh, he's one of them. And yeah, it upsets his dynamic, particularly with a chef who suddenly they'll go in, there's a real hierarchy in getting your food delivered and getting the food on time and things for your customers when it starts getting busy.

And he finds out, actually, they think he's a dick because he's gonna take this job.

Reegs: Yeah. They're also complete lunatics. The chefs, so aren't they? They're brandish knives and shout things like, welcome to the Thunderdome and whatnot.

So

Dan: and, lobotied the person who is a bitch or an arsehole in this place. Because when the food gets sent back, which it does

Reegs: well, this confirms your very worst fears about what can happen to people serving you. And it's, look, I've gotta be a number one rule is that you don't mess with people who are serving you food.

And the bitchy customer, I can't even remember how this scene starts, but she's

Sidey: don't mess with people who are serving you food. And the get go, but we were watching it together, me and the missus, and I thought, well, she's, because she says something like, I've been here four times, and every time, you're like, well, you wouldn't, you wouldn't go back. You know, because it's a franchise, so you could go to any one of the other million things that are these fucking strip malls or whatever.

So she's obviously on the take and straight away she's being a complete arsehole and just shouting and berating the staff. I don't want my fucking food like this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And when she, I think she orders a steak. Medium rare and it comes out and before she even tastes it She's like prodding it with her finger saying it's not right and screaming and berating the staff So you just know like that's not going to come back in any any edible way, you know

Dan: any any edible way, you know. But it's just as they come in they're on a rotation system, so, it's luck of the

Reegs: It was one of the more interesting bits where they talk about which customers are gonna be good customers. You know, you don't want the table full of foreigners 'cause they don't know you're supposed to tip and they don't speak English and

Dan: And they all have a good laugh about that in german they think that we don't understand so we don't have to tip

Reegs: and you don't want the hillbilly 'cause he's not gonna tip and you don't want this, you know, and they're one of the more interesting aspects, I guess. Yeah. But yeah, she's a bitch. They send the food back and it just

Sidey: A conveyor belt of misery of like, spit. He spits in the mashed potato, I think, and then

Reegs: Dandruff.

Sidey: They did dandruff and they do snot, I think, and then he

Dan: No, it doesn't do. It's not. He goes, no. No, look at it not on this steak diane or whatever it goes like it goes.

Oh garlic flakes and he he brushes his dandruff into ah now we're thinking he's they're kind of cooking up this

Reegs: it is topped off with a few pubes, I think.

And sent back out. And she takes this like enormous bite of it and relishes every mouthful. Yeah.

And then some other stuff happens. This was shit, wasn't it

Sidey: It wasn't great. They They kind of progressed it through. There's a sort of thing of Ryan Reynolds and Anne Farris characters have had a relationship in the past.

And she's sort of appalled with him trying to carry on with the hostess girl, but also they're probably going to get back

Reegs: carry on

Sidey: maybe.

Reegs: hostess girl, but also they're probably going to get back

Sidey: He says her weight. He says her weight.

Reegs: Yeah, all the

Sidey: They said fag and yeah, all the dick stuff was really homophobic. There was just endless comments about being fags.

Reegs: Yeah. It it's just fag. Fag. It's like the mind of a 15 year

Sidey: I

Reegs: boy. Like, I can't believe they should all be ashamed of themselves. . I didn't,

Sidey: didn't know that I didn't know which year it had been released. Before I started watching it, but I looked while I was watching it. And Dodgeball had come out the year before, so just along, like, This has aged so

Reegs: so

Sidey: bad, like, worse than any film I think that we've watched, this is,

Reegs: If it came out today, Ryan Reynolds would be immediately cancelled probably because it's just like...

Sidey: And also...

I

do like Ryan Reynolds, I think he's a good guy, obviously hugely successful so he gives a fuck what I think, but this is like, the worst of him.

Reegs: I actually think this is a role I really like from him, like just a total prick, basically. I think he could play that really well because he's just so dislikable in this. And at least that's something different to his cheery guy persona, which he just plays on the edge of that.

Sidey: edge of that.

Yeah, I just, I found him quite irritating. You know, I suppose he's supposed to be irritating. The whole film was irritating.

It

Reegs: oh, it's garbage.

This is,

Sidey: don't really know. Maybe

Dan: Oh, it's garbage. I enjoyed. There was, you know, we talked about the running dick jokes going through it, which caught out various people. nads at one point, don't you?

Reegs: there. Yeah.

Dan: actually gets them out and gives us a whirl. So, it's not all bad, but

Sidey: everyone in it has been in better stuff.

Dan: yes, 100%.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: If you wanna go and see a just in Long movie Watch Tusk yeah, I would say watch Tusk rather than this and it looks like to me every attempts been made to bury it.

Sidey: Yeah. I think, well, when you look, when you comment it now, it, you know, the humor is just, you wouldn't, you wouldn't do it the way they, they've done it. The budget for it was three mil. Right? So obviously they were getting people at the kind of, Early part of their career and shockingly it made 18 and a half million.

So it did it did. Okay,

Reegs: I can see it connecting with an audience. It's just like a, I don't

Sidey: I Do I do because I haven't worked let's say it would be good to hear Chris's take on it But I haven't worked in hospitality like that per se, but I have worked Um sort of in kitchens and been around That's not even really true, but I sort of have and and also just seeing the difference between say an american restaurant and something Over here, that whole hostess thing's always kind of like freaked me out.

I don't understand it but when you see it from here, it's like There is a hierarchy and it's almost quite political in the restaurant of like, where if you're nice to the hostess, she'll make sure you get the good guests that are probably going to be the best tippers. And then if you're a fucking prick, like the kitchen are going to like stitch you up and all that sort of stuff.

So that, that like the mechanics of how the,

Reegs: and the

Sidey: yeah, how, how the restaurant actually functions was quite interesting, but the actual people in it were all like, they could all burn. I don't care.

Dan: people in it were all, like, they were all burned, I think. I remember going to a restaurant and the

waiter saying to the plate's really hot. And I said, I'm not even attracted to plates, mate. Crazy

Reegs: terrible, terrible, terrible. Yeah, not very good.

Sidey: It wasn't great. It wasn't a huge success, this one, for me.

Reegs: it's just like a relentless onslaught of homophobia and dick jokes.

But boring.

Dan: It's not one to, to rush out and see you're best just going to a real restaurant.

Sidey: Agreed.