Servitude

Rating: ***

On several levels, the new comedy Servitude just makes sense. On the one hand, it’s a comedy about waiters revolting against impertinent, ignorant customers, and who hasn’t been up to that line? On the other hand though, at least in the back of my mind, was the age old cliché about how out-of-work actors wait tables till their proverbial ship comes in, and wouldn’t you know it, one of the characters is an out-of-work actor. But at its heart, Servitude is just a fun little comedy in the vain of Office Space, a workers’ rebellion with all the enjoyment of sticking it to the man without any of those icky Marxist undertones.

We meet Josh (Joe Dinicol), an upstanding young man trying to prove himself by working three years as a waiter to build character, per his father’s request, before getting a full ride to law school. His girlfriend Jenny (Kristen Hager) is on him about quitting, but Josh hasn’t “found the right time.” But per Jenny’s ultimate though, tonight’s going to be the night, though before Josh can quit this time, his boss Godfrey (Dave Foley) persuades him to work the first part of the night to help out. The restaurant, one of chain called The Ranch Steakhouse, is getting a once over by a corporate flack (Enrico Colantoni) from their new German parent company.

Of course nothing ends up going to plan, otherwise there would be no comedy. Dinicol is an affable enough leading man, and he guides us through the various characters and dilemmas, not to mention his own drama as Josh, with a degree of grace and style. As the film’s emotional centre, and its only real straightman, Dinicol still manages to come off as funny and charming. Dinicol’s two main partners in crime are John Bregar as horn dog Tommy, and Jeigh Madjus as the actor-in-waiting Simon. They make a formidable trio, and are able lead the rest of the film’s cast through the plot.

Lending support to the young actors is a diverse cast of veteran comedic actors in various roles be they secondary or cameo. Prominent among them is Dave Foley, who, although having made some questionable movie choices lately (like Uwe Boll’s horrid Postal), acquits himself well as Godfrey, a man kind of burnt out on whatever dreams and ambitions he once had, only to now find himself a corporate toady. But he plays well off Enrico Colantoni as German boss Franz, who’s a broad stereotype (“I’m very interested in your ovens,” he says repeatedly), but Colantoni plays it straight to make it work.

Indeed, it is the actors that make this film work as well as it does, they form an extremely effective team, and are all very comfortable with each other. In my interview with Joe Dinicol he described the experience on set as being similar to what it must have been like to work on Cheers, which makes sense because this cast makes it look like they’ve been playing these roles for years.

Because of that, occasional instances of contrived and stale humour can be forgiven. There was a crack about the WNBA and a fairly obvious site gag that called back the first Mission: Impossible film, and for a minute, I thought it was 1998 all over again. The characters play across broad stereotypes: Tommy’s a horn dog, Simon the actor is flamboyantly gay, Jenny is shrill and disagreeable, so when the much more laid back and fun Alex (Rachel Skarsten) enters the picture, you know where the story’s going. Degrassi’s Lauren Collins is fun as the uptight hostess Krissy, and Aaron Ashmore has a surprisingly good jerk of a turn playing Jen’s ex come to The Ranch to mock Josh.

And that’s the key here. The film is a great showcase for the cast, and manages to mine a lot of comedy, whether you see it coming or not, out of the nearly absurdist concept of a restaurant workers revolt. It might nearly be the Waiting… for the Occupy generation, but let’s not go crazy assigning any kind of greater ambition other than to entertain. It may not be wholly original, but Servitude is definitely serviceable.