WAITING . . . (2005). Writer/director Rob McKittrick's agonizing debut wants to be a Clerks-meets-Slackers comedy about the young and restless wait staff of an Applebee's-style restaurant. Mopy Dean (Justin Long) dithers over a promotion while asshole-and-proud-of-it Monty (Ryan Reynolds) trolls for jailbait and spews an excruciatingly overwritten stream of sarcasm. The requisite kitchen antics expose the vengeful side of food service (pubic hair as "sprouts"! dandruff as "sea salt"!), and there's a tiresome prank featuring an origami-like twisting of the scrotum. Plodding and humorless, the film strains for a ribald edge but instead manages to be homophobic, racist, misogynist, and misanthropic all at once. As a hazed trainee, John Francis Daley (all grown up from Freaks and Geeks) lets loose a cathartic rant, but it's not worth waiting a torturous 80 minutes. (93m)

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