Dir: Adrienne Shelly
With: Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Cheryl Hines, Adrienne Shelly, Andy Griffith


This sugary confection from the late actress turned writer-director Adrienne Shelly is a resolutely upbeat romantic comedy that's hard to dislike, despite being too saccharine for its own good.

Cute Keri Russell plays the titular waitress, and master pie-maker, Jenna, who works happily in a friendly small town diner - but suffers in a loveless marriage with her overbearing husband.

Horrified to find herself pregnant by her brute, Jenna consults the town's new, handsome and married young MD, Doctor Pomatter (Nathan Fillion), and before they know it the pair are having a romantic affair.

It's all very sweet and sentimental. The characters - which also include Shelly's kookie fellow waitress Cheryl Hines and Hollywood veteran Andy Griffith's wise old-timer and diner owner - range from endearing to adorable (while Jeremy Sisto's brutish husband turns out to be a pitiful child rather than an abusive adult).

The world they inhabit is a candy-coloured, 1950s retro-styled (though modern-day set) slice of nostalgia that straightaway telegraphs the message that nothing really bad is going to happen.

And, of course, nothing really bad does occur in the film. Without giving the (happy) ending away, everyone gets their just desserts.

One might have expected something a bit sharper from Shelly, whose schooling in film began in the late 1980s/early 1990s when she was directed by the American indie cinema auteur Hal Hartley in The Unbelievable Truth and Trust and was curtailed last year after she was horribly, tragically murdered, but there's no denying her gift for unalloyed sweetness.