Waitress

Plenty of reason to root for this little indie, what with writer/director Adrienne Shelly’s subsequent fate and her poignant postmortem acclaim at Sundance. But I’ll be as cold as the film itself left me -- it just doesn’t have the snap-crackle-&-pop to be a successful comedy, or the authenticity and perception to be an effective drama. Keri Russell is not without appeal as the reluctantly pregnant but ecstatically pie-baking young woman at the center of this story. The supporting cast is intriguing but makes for an out-of-key ensemble -- Cheryl Hines, Shelly herself, Andy Griffith, Jeremy Sisto (making his “Six Feet Under” character Southern and a little more degenerate), Nathan Fillion (trying to flip his image from the ultimate demon in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”). The credit sequence suggests the film might be classic food porn, and the pie-baking trope works pretty well throughout, but most of the effort to work against type makes the film of no type at all. Honorable effort and all, too bad Ms. Shelly won’t be able to move on to better work, but this is a crowd-pleaser only for a crowd that resolutely wants to be pleased. (2007, Images, n.) *6-* (MC-74.)