For your own good, a warning: "Waiting.," a "comedy" written and directed by former Orlando waiter Rob McKittrick and starring "Van Wilder's" Ryan Reynolds, is not the film adaptation of Ha Jin's critically acclaimed novel "Waiting," a love story set against China's changing political landscape.

"Waiting."-and this is the last time ellipses will appear in this review, so savor it-takes place over a single shift at ShenaniganZ, a TGI Friday's/Ruby Tuesday's/Applebee's clone where Product Pride and Portion-consciousness is the manager's motivational mantra.

Dry-witted Monty (Reynolds) is the waitstaff womanizer eager to impart his restaurant wisdom to new trainee Mitch (John Francis Daley) and hop into bed with almost-18 hostess, name not important.

Monty's best pal Dean (Justin Long) is going through one of those mid-20s where-am-I-going-who-am-I crises, tipped off by his mom's run-in with an old classmate who just graduated with an engineering degree from a university while Dean can't get through junior college.

Together with two hot blond waitresses (Ann Faris and Kaitlin Doubleday), the token lesbian bartender and a demented kitchen staff led by five-second-rule king Raddimus (Luis Guzman), Dean and Monty butter up tables for tips and fine-tune strategy for The Game.

OK, The Game: It's not pretty, it's not easy to write about and worst of all, it's not funny. The object is to surprise a male co-worker with a creative flash of private parts, and the payoff is that part-flasher gets to call part-gawker gay. It is, as the ladies call it, "an exercise in retarded homophobic futility," though they say this because it's in the script to get laughs, and I say this because it is true.

"Waiting" could have been a funny movie. There are a few truths about food-service that McKittrick gets right but doesn't fully exploit, such as the manager who, though a glorified, 40-year-old waiter, sees himself as King. And how a bunch of clueless, horny young hourlies bond over an eight-hour dinner rush, when the whole wide world comes down to the decision between baked potato, fries or rice pilaf.

Then there are the truths McKittrick milks dry, most of which take place in the kitchen, where bitter cooks let loose their rage via bodily fluids on buffalo wings. This is, to paraphrase some pretty little ladies, retarded, and also not funny because it is pushed way too far.

Remember "Office Space," with Jennifer Aniston as a flair-wearing Chotchkie's waitress? See, writer/director Mike Judge got his chain-dining establishment just right, honing in with accuracy on one indisputable fact: Everyone is faking it. Judge knows that work can be a demeaning, frustrating and futile effort, so when IT guys kick the crap out of a copy machine or a boss talks for 20 minutes without saying a single thing of significance, you smile.

It's these specifics that McKittrick misses. Had he written some, I think his young cast could have pulled it off, especially Reynolds, who is clearly an apprentice at the School of Vince Vaughn, fast-talking and sarcastic. Now he just needs to slow down, show some heart, stop overcompensating.

But in a movie infatuated with a fictional genitalia-flashing contest, this is a tall order.
Ever since Office Space skewered the flair-happy fern bar industry, the food service biz has been waiting for a flick to do it full-time justice. Is Waiting that film or should fans console themselves with the sitcom Kitchen Confidential? (* out of four)

As in waiting for it to be over. With its cast full of characters you'd flee from in real life, this comedy about slave-wagers at a chain restaurant might have been surefire, even though its premise had its day in 1999's Office Space.

But that film's scattershot scenes with Jennifer Aniston were 20-fold funnier than anything here, especially when the waitress she played kept being admonished by her superior to wear more "flair" on her eatery's official uniform.

Ryan Reynolds (from Van Wilder, lucky him) plays the smarmiest in a crew of misfit lackeys at Shenanigans, where a little homemade phlegm in the entrée of a disagreeable customer is just another day at work.

Another motif is the game that staffers play, in which the goal is to flash unsuspecting co-workers.

Five or 10 minutes in, the picture has exhausted its material, but first-time writer/director Rob McKittrick is merciless.