Director-writer-actress Adrienne Shelly was murdered before her film Waitress premiered at Sundance Film Festival to audience acclaim. It's a real pity because Waitress, while flawed in some ways, does offer a flicker of genuine promise and originality � a promise that now will never be fulfilled.

Keri Russell (of Felicity fame) plays a waitress in a small cafe who is trapped in an unhappy relationship with her chauvinistic and bullying husband (Jeremy Sisto). She finds comfort in baking delicious pies to which she gives peculiar names like "I Hate My Husband Pie", "Bad Baby Quiche" and "Pregnant Miserable Self Pitying Loser Pie". Things come to a head when she discovers that she is pregnant with his child � a child she does not want to have...

Waitress floats from one scene to another with a measure of grace and good humour, but it doesn't always add up to very much. Yes, it is sweet; yes, it is endearing. Yes, it offers up homespun lessons that you may already know � such as, life is what you make of it and not what it makes of you. But it is also a meandering sort of film where issues can go on for too long, or get resolved rather too abruptly.

Waitress is a nice little film to watch when you're feeling kinda down but you don't really know why. It is not a great film, but it can perform a little magic.