Unearthed unexpectedly, this is a long-buried masterpiece - Samuel
Beckett's sequel to Waiting for Godot. Most literary scholars had felt it
to be lost forever.
SPOILER:
He never shows.
END SPOILERS:
I'm just fuckin' witcha. It's actually a straight-to-vid sequel of a
lowbrow comedy called Waiting ..., minus the biggest names who appeared in
the first. Anna Faris and Ryan Reynolds did not elect to appear in the
sequel, probably because they read the script. Justin Long did appear, but
his part was more or less a cameo, and was probably filmed in a single
day.
Once again the story takes place within a single day in the life of a
chain restaurant. The site manager would really like to make it to the
district manager position, but if he fails to reach the top of his
metaphorical thermometer, the corporate heavy breathers will not consider
him for the promotion. Unfortunately for him, he seems doomed to failure
because of a new competitor next door. His Shenanigan's (read Bennigan's,
minus the lawsuit) is facing stiff competition from the neighboring Ta-Tas
(read Hooters), which is not only taking away customers, but his hottest
female employees as well. There is only one day left in his current
reporting period, and he can't make his quarterly goal without a
miraculous and unprecedented gross on that day. As a result, he has to
push the staff extra hard, using the time-honored motivational tactics of
fear and deceit.
The one thing that made the original script a pretty good piece of
comedy was that it really revealed the truth about life in the service
industry. The characters were drawn from life, and the story revealed a
lot of crazy things that can transpire behind the scenes. Watching it was
like eavesdropping on service industry workers who are amusing one another
with their best "war stories." Uncharacteristically for a lowbrow comedy,
IMDb contributors frequently comment on the film's accuracy! It's rated
6.9 at IMDb, which is almost unheard of for a lowbrow comedy. To give you
an idea how good that is, it's a hair below There's Something About Mary
and a hair above Kingpin. Pretty impressive.
The level of humor in the second one is similar to the first, but the
originality and appropriateness are not. The sequel is generic and could
pretty much take place in any workplace. Very little is industry-specific.
Take the same script, modify it just slightly, and it could take place in
a convenience store or a department store or a furniture store or even
outside of retail. Moreover, the characters and situations have left
reality and entered the fantasy world, especially at the Ta-Tas next door.
Adam Carolla is pretty funny as the world's worst self-help guru, whose
tape is watched by the shy Shenanigan's manager. Of course, that is a
throwaway bit which has nothing to do with the restaurant business. The
one funny major character in Still Waiting ... is the hostess, a burnt-out
alcoholic hottie with a major chip on her shoulder and a vocabulary that
would seem a bit extreme at a Tourette's convention. Her attitude gets
even worse when the neighboring Ta-Tas turns her down for a job because
she doesn't have the obligatory perma-smile required by that chain to
match her admittedly impressive ta-tas.
