Waiting...

Plot synopsis:
Shiv Kumar (Naseeruddin Shah), an elderly psychology professor, arrives at a hospital in Kochi to visit his comatose wife Pankaja (Suhasini Maniratnam). Tara Kapoor Desphande (Kalki Koechlin), a young advertising agent, also arrives at the hospital during the night after being delivered news of a car accident involving her husband, Rajat Deshpande (Arjun Mathur). She is consoled by Rajat's eccentric co-worker Girish (Rajeev Ravindranathan), but dismisses him abruptly. Tara is deeply disturbed to see Rajat breathing on a ventilator, and leaves immediately.
In the waiting lounge, Tara approaches Shiv, believing him to be a doctor, and asks for his advice. He reveals that his wife had a stroke eight months ago while he was out watching a cricket match, and has been in a coma ever since. The two bond over their similar situations. Later, Girish drops Tara off at a hotel and gives her Rajat's bag. Tara finds his watch in it and puts it on. The next day she is angered on reading an intimate message on Rajat's phone from a colleague Sheetal, who is later revealed to be a man. Shiv witnesses the whole misunderstanding and the two share a light moment. He later visits her at the hotel, and she shares her disappointment with her friends and followers on social media for having abandoned her. She commends Shiv for his composure, as he explains the five stages of grief to her.
Tara finds her strength in Shiv, a wiser and more experienced counterpart. The two start spending most of their spare time together coping with their grief, despite being completely opposite in nature. Shiv takes Tara to the temple, and she takes him shopping. Rajat's doctor, Dr. Nirupam Malhotra (Rajat Kapoor), tells Tara that Rajat has a hematoma in his brain and a surgery might help him recover, but it carries the risk of partial paralysis. Tara is torn, as she believes Rajat would not want to take the risk, and seeks advice from Shiv. He is already at loggerheads with Dr. Malhotra, dismissing him as a pawn of the hospital board and the insurance companies who only care about making money and not the patients. Tara and Shiv get into a heated argument. Shiv lashes out angrily at Tara for not giving Rajat a chance at life. Tara retorts that she is a realist, and dismisses Shiv for being selfish and making his wife go through pain for his own sake.
Tara's best friend Ishita (Ratnabali Bhattacharjee) arrives at Kochi and advises her to start chanting prayers and to inform Rajat's estranged parents of his situation. Despite being an atheist, Tara chants Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō when she is alone with Rajat. Shiv desperately attempts to convince Dr. Malhotra to perform a spinal decompression on his wife, but he disregards Shiv's research and refuses to proceed with surgery. Tara discusses Rajat's surgery with Ishita and decides not to go ahead with it which further angers Dr. Malhotra. Ishita leaves to aid her ailing son. Tara realises that she is no longer Ishita's top priority, now that Ishita is married. Shiv and Tara make up and later that night dance together at Shiv's house, much to the amusement of his neighbours. They get upset thinking about their spouses and discuss what they meant to them, before falling asleep in the living room.
The next morning, Tara leaves early and decides to inform Rajat's mother. After Girish brings Tara the required insurance papers, she thanks him for always being there for her and apologises for being rude. She decides to go ahead with the surgery after all. Rajat is taken to surgery and she holds his hand until they arrive at the operating room. Shiv, on the other hand, decides to take Pankaja off the ventilator and let his wife herself make the final call. Pankaja tries to breathe on her own as the viewers are treated with flashbacks of the heydays of both couples. Tara takes a seat in the waiting lounge, and is joined by Shiv as the camera pans out.

Tags: revenge, humor, comedy

Review:
Waiting is the best, most accurate, most honest, and most riotously funny movie ever made about the service industry.
Those who have never worked a day of their lives in a restaurant may find this movie amusing, but they'll think it's too absurd to be real, and they'll probably never give a second thought to this movie ever again.But those of you who have felt the pain, degradation, and humiliation of waiting tables will p**s your pants laughing at how PERFECT this movie is.
The restaurant they all work at is called "Shenanigans," but it looks an awful lot like the TGI Fridays I worked at.All the characters in Waiting are based on the real people who work in every restaurant.
I can't believe they actually made a movie showing all the things that servers, cooks, dishwashers, hostess', and managers all do in a day's time.
Loved Dane Cook, Andy Milonakis, and Ryan Reynolds of course; Justin Long, Anna Faris, Alanna Ubach(HILARIOUS!), and John Daley who I haven't seen since Freaks and Geeks when he was a little guy.
All the other actors as the employees all do wonderful performances, making the background character more interesting.Waiting is a great black comedy on hospitality that is so painfully funny..
This movie just goes in depth on a day-in-the-life, of normal people working in a small restaurant.
Another thing about this movie that made it so funny was a game that the men of the restaurant played.
While "Office Space" and "Waiting" do share similar plots, first time director Rob McKittrick seems to have more of a flare for slacker comedy than Mike Judge.What also makes this comedy stand out is the great casting and colorful characters.
The always funny Ryan Reynolds leads the crew of misfits including Anna Faris, Justin Long and the incredibly hilarious Luiz Guzman.This movie can get a tad immature at times, but those who love movies like "The 40-Year Old Virgin" and "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" will absolutely worship this picture..
My new favorite trilogy will be Clerks, Office Space, Waiting.../* I've never worked at any place that serves food but after 10 retail jobs I can truly enjoy this movie.
When you sit down to watch a comedy that you think may have potential to be really genuine, hilarious, and have some crude adult humor thrown in beware, it may turn out to be a total stinker like "Waiting...".
When I first read about "Waiting" a few months ago, I kind of wanted to see the film because it sounded pretty interesting plus it starred Justin Long who usually is very good and Anna Faris who although always plays the same character in every movie is still pretty likable.
Even the whole putting things in your food joke was used before in films like "Road Trip." The so called jokes in this film are not funny and there isn't a fresh joke in the sight during the entire films running time.I really don't understand how Ryan Reynolds still gets work.
His character gets very annoying very quickly.This movie runs on two gags, the so called game that the male workers play and the whole lets drop people's food on the floor or do disgusting things to there food gag and honestly neither work.
The movie is rather pointless with no real plot and is extremely poorly written with one-dimensional characters.Bottom line, this is without a doubt the worst film of the year.
After watching this movie about a "day in the life of a restaurant," I couldn't understand the high rating it gets on IMDb, but then I noticed that most of the reviewers are former wait-persons who identified with the over-the-top caricatures of the staff and customers of these restaurants.For anyone else it is just a bunch of crude high-school level gross-out jokes.
I've worked in the service industry for almost 10 years now (since I was about 14 years old), and let me just say to anyone who's ever waited tables in their life who's thinking about seeing this movie: GO NOW!
This movie just confirms that it was a good idea that I never worked in a restaurant like that and it confirms why I never wanted to make a career out of waiting tables!
You are either the "average" 14 year old, or for you this type of "humor" was funny to you.It had a good cast I guess for a comedy, but it just wasn't there, penis joke after penis joke, I thought the "game" would be a 3 minute segment.
That's it.I felt the entire movie was dedicated to people like myself who worked in a kitchen or were a waiter and it was crying out "relate to me" "This really is sorta how a restaurant is, with a comedic twist".
, that the director notices the little things that go on all the time in restaurants, like the fake smiles, and the "waiting for the last customer to come in".
Waiting reviewed by Sam Osborn of www.samseescinema.com rating: 3 out of 4Director: Robert McKittrick Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Justin Long, Chi McBride, Anna Faris, Dane Cook Screenplay: Robert McKittrick MPAA Classification: R (strong and crude sexual humor, pervasive language and some drug use)2005 has, as of yet, been dubbed as the year for comedy's comeback.
With two hugely popular comedies (Wedding Crashers and 40 Year Old Virgin) pooling tickets sales much past the $100 million mark at the box office, Lions Gate Productions' new entry, Waiting, couldn't have hoped for a better crowd for their film to leap into.
It's certainly not as good as the other broad comedies lauded this year, but its low, low, low brow humor and consistently funny gross-out gags are sure to satisfy the same audiences that loved the Crashers and the Virgin.The film takes place over the course of one day, following the lives of the waiters, cooks, and manager of the family restaurant chain Shenanigans (in a nice nod to Sooper Troopers).
First time director/writer Robert McKittrick, wrote the screenplay to work as a kind of oddball ensemble film, where we flit about the restaurant's many characters and their insane issues.
Having worked for nearly a year in a similarly depressing job as the characters in Waiting (I'm a lowly part-time cashier at Target), I, and surely many other teenagers, can relate to the oddball relationships of these waiters.
I have worked as a cook in a restaurant, this movie couldn't have hit the bullseye any better.
From the restaurant parties and romances to the absolutely asinine orientation tape we are all forced to watch, to the games, to the perfect description of the ridiculous customers, this film is funny from the first frame to the last.The plot is really secondary to the action and the antics and the hilarity.
Waiting might be a bit different, but as I said earlier, the laughs come frenetically enough in here to entertain anyone.It's fun to watch a film and relate to exactly what is happening on screen.
I've watched plenty of crappy comedy movies and had good cheap laughs but this was just not funny.
Not sure if this movie is quite as funny if you haven't ever waited tables....BUT having spent a number of years in the service industry, I almost pulled an abdominal laughing.Whoever wrote this obviously worked in the restaurant business.I worked with every character in the movie at least once.(Sans 'the game')Rib-splitting funny, not citizen cane, but worth every penny.Ryan Reynolds is always amusing and continues his offbeat charm as the central character of this fun flick.Thesis statement: Be nice to your server, tips spelled backward is spit..
While this is debatable, it's not that hard to be put off by "Waiting...." With its constant barrage of homophobic slurs, penis gags, pot jokes, and pubic hair, writer-director Rob McKittrick aims for 'crude humor' (as the MPAA descriptor would say) but somehow winds up missing the 'humor.' Being gross is one thing; making gross FUNNY is another altogether, and the sight of a guy wetting himself or a girl flashing her lint-caked bu$h amounts to zilch if shown only for its own sake.The actors do their best with the salmonella material, but the characters are underdeveloped clichés (The Awkward Guy; The Confident Stud; The New Guy; The Slut; The High-Strung Bitch, etc.), and, in all honesty, the cast as a whole (including the kid from "Jeepers Creepers" and Ryan Reynolds) isn't comprised of names you'd associate with highbrow entertainment in the first place.Actually, the only true entertainer within this motley crew of less-than-colorful rejects is 'seasoned' character actor Luis Guzman, as a brazenly crude Latino chef who hits the only remotely comic notes in this whole wasted enterprise.
You're day usually starts with sitting around talking to other waiters, doing whatever back of the house work before opening, then standing around talking to other waiters while customers trickle into the restaurant.Waiting tables is a lot of down times spiced with a few hours of utterly exhausting, frenzied madness.
I imagine customers would pay a lot more than an extra 15% if restaurants actually paid hostesses, waiters, bus boys and bar tenders what they were worth.If he had actually addressed these issues and toned down the gross out humor, this film might have had a better chance with a wider audience.
Waiting for someone to give me back the two hours of my life spent waiting for it to become worthwhile watching.My wife and I only chanced to see this movie because there was nothing else on by the time we managed to organize baby sitting for the kids, and we were determined to see a film.
Reading reviews of this slight little 'comedy', it seems the positive accolades come primarily from people who have been waiters: that is a good thing because it means writer/director Rob McKittrick managed to duplicate the experiences 'behind the scenes' of our eating establishments with authority.But a film that is self-absorbed about the manner in which a disparate group of young people spend their boring lives avoiding adulthood in a restaurant, aptly named Shenanigan's here, is a National Lampoon type potty mouth series of one liners that has little to recommend it unless you've experienced the life of a waitperson.
The person who said the film was disgusting and boring has never worked in a restaurant, never taken to time to observe others, and has or will probably suffer the same fate as those select few on the check-off board in the back kitchen.
Great movie, although it really rips off a lot of other things we've seen before.I was still surprised that I got so many great laughs out of this film, these days a lot of comedy movies suck.
Everyone should be forced to wait tables at some point in their lives and this movie couldn't be more indicative of an actual restaurant.
All it is, is employees waiting servers and talking about getting tips, and doing nasty things to the customers food.This movie runs on two gags, the so called game that the male workers play and the whole 'lets drop people's food on the floor' or do disgusting things to there food gag, and honestly neither work.
If you have ever worked in a restaurant you will laugh your ass off.The entire movie takes place during one night at the restaurant, and you will find yourself never wanting it to end.
Not really but everything in it has happened at some restaurant,and that makes it all the grosser.(I know a guy that used to spit in every BigMac grill order,or so he said)This movie does give the overall right feel as what it is to work in a restaurant, just all the characters are exaggerated for humour and watch-ability here.Well written, very fast pace with not one bad joke, everything worked well and everything seemed authentic.One of the best low brow humor movies I have seen, really laughed out load though a lot of this great movie..
so not impressed3 friends and i went and we were bored like we were watching the paint dry in the movies own restaurant!!sure there were a few laughs, but War of the Worlds had a few laughs too, that doesn't make it a comedy.nothing really happens for way too long a while!!!
It may just be the most disgusting movie of the year, but it sure as hell isn't the funniest.'Waiting...' follows the lives of very f*cked-up individuals working at a 'T.G.I. Friday's' sort of restaurant.
During Mitch's first day he encounters the creepy loser manager, Dan (David Koechner), a struggling waiter who has aspirations of a greater job, Dean (Justin Long), Dean's sweet girlfriend who is one of the waitresses (Jordan Ladd), a wild loose kind of waitress (Anna Farris), a chain-smoking foul-mouthed senior waitress who hates everyone (Alanna Ulbach), a geeky waiter who has bad luck with girls and public urination (Robert Patrick Benedict), two clueless potheads who think they are black (Max Kasch and MTV's Andy Milonakis), a quiet but super-cool head chef (Chi McBride), a crazy and raunchy young chef (the ultra-hilarious Dane Cook) and an absolutely insane chef who invented a game where he tries to show people his genitals (Luis Guzman of course).
If you like raunchy humor just for the sake of being absolutely disgusting and not terribly funny, you'll love a movie like 'Waiting...'.
Well, like one of the characters in the film, I couldn't urinate if I tried.It does have some good camera-work, with the camera smoothly navigating a restaurant floor crowded with tables and people.
Some of them were so bad as jobs I had to walk out on them; I definitely sympathize with cooks and waitstaff.Plenty of funny things happened at the restaurants I worked at, so I certainly thought there was a lot of potential for humor, but I just didn't find the movie funny at all, unfortunately.There's absolutely something to be said for restaurants where the chef prepares your food right at your table, or those with open kitchens, or at the very least those with an open doorway to the kitchen.
If I had to guess, Rob McKittrick (the writer/director), probably worked at a restaurant at some point in time, but he himself doesn't understand comedy, doesn't know how to write, and even if he did find some things funny, they were only funny to him.
I have been to the restaurant that the filmed this at so there was some connection with the movie but other than that the characters were one-dimensional and in most cases: completely unfunny.
The script seemed like they were trying to be edgy and funny with quick quips about society and the people in the restaurant, but for the most part it did not work at all.
From there you have Justin Long, the nerdy guy from Dodgeball, of who plays a still nerdy, but funny smart kid, Dean, who did great in high-school but now waits tables at "ShenaniganZ." The movie starts out with a house party where all of the main characters are wasted out of their minds and doing a slew of different drugs to boot.
Although a lot of the script was taken from the writers real life before Hollywood, it was still great comedy.If you love places with silly crap on the wall like Applebee's and Chili's or any restaurant for that matter, don't see this movie.
Waiting is funny!It's about the day in the life of several restaurant workers and the misadventures that come along side.The best thing about this movie is that it does exactly want you want it to do.
As a former server at a restaurant, I can definitely relate to this film (minus the spitting & ruining customer's food, though I definitely wanted to sometimes)The acting's good, the laughs are consistent, and it's a fun relatable comedy about funny frustrations in the workplace.
I have worked in restaurants for 18 years and I have worked with every character in this movie.
Looking back on this movie I still remember our reaction in the theater still makes me turn away at some moments.The Film stars: Ryan Reynolds as Monty Justin Long as Dean Anna Faris as Serena David Koechner as Dan Luis Guzmán as Raddimus Chi McBride as Bishop John Francis Daley as Mitch Kaitlin Doubleday as Amy Robert Patrick Benedict as Calvin Alanna Ubach as Naomi Vanessa Lengies as Natasha Max Kasch as T-Dog Andy Milonakis as Nick Dane Cook as Floyd Jordan Ladd as Danielle Emmanuelle Chriqui as Tyla the Bartender Wendie Malick as Monty's MomEach of these characters work in the restaurant Shenaniganz.
The acting in this film is real strong the entire cast help the film and their performances help make their characters convincing it's nice to see a independent movie getting a shot like this and each of the cast members really did a good job Yes there are moments that you would agree shouldn't been in the film but the film is really enjoyable and will make you laugh.I give Waiting...
Once the movie ended, I was very disappointed that I had wasted 94 minutes on this pointless comedy.Waiting centers on a colourful group of restaurant staff "Shenaniganz" who are disenfranchised with their own lives and could not care in the least bit for their customers, often amusing themselves with over the top sexual and disgusting antics.I did not find this movie interesting, let alone funny.
Maybe it's more funny to people who actually worked at a place like this.
I think that a whole lot of this movie is really funny, and especially the ending scene made me laugh a ton.
I personally know that this was an issue due to the fact that by the time Waiting actually got around to being made, he didn't want to play the same character in two comedies so close together.