Last night I went to go see the movie Waitress (SPOILERS FOLLOW!) with a friend. I highly recommend the movie – it is well-written, dark humor and I think there are some great performances by the actors. However, it made me start to think about Hollywood’s obsession with happy endings and especially what message they send to young women. Just to set the scene….

In the movie, Keri Russell plays a waitress in a dingy pie cafe who has unintentionally gotten pregnant by her controlling husband. Russell is an incredible pie creator (she invents a new pie recipe every day) and baker but it is clear that she is paid about minimum wage and that her husband does not make much more. She decides to keep the baby despite her economic constraints but agonizes over whether she can be a good mother to a baby she does not really want. Throw in an affair with her OBGYN and the attempt to hide money from her husband Earl and the audience realizes this woman, despite her best intensions, does not quite have it all together. As the movie comes to a close things get resolved as followed: she has the baby, the baby is beautiful and she loves it from the moment it is born, she tells Earl off, ends the affair with her doctor and receives a check from the owner of her pie café (who coincidentally had been admitted for surgery the same day and died) to open up her own pie store. Now, if you are feeling a bit woozy from reading all of those resolutions that happen in the span of about 5 minutes towards the end of the movie – join the club.

I really don’t have any qualms with most of the ending. It seems clear to me why she was going to love her baby. Although I have never had kids there is a special maternal bond that women feel once they have created a child. So while I was thrilled when she decided she was comfortable in her newfound motherhood, I was not surprised. Second of all – I think her ending both of the relationships with the nutty husband and the doctor (although a nice guy, clearly she was better off on her own) was a good independence message for young women that sometimes it is the guys who are dragging you down – in this case, mostly emotionally.

Now, here’s where I have my problem…call me a cynic but it seems that her economic troubles are resolved so magically and unrealistically that we are left with the idea that being a single mother is “easy as pie” (if you pardon the pun). Are we supposed to believe that if we are in the same situation to just not worry and some nice old man will come and give you two hundred grand we’ll be set? I guess I would rather they show her doing something extraordinary to get the money to start a new life (in the last scene they show her winning the $25k from a pie baking competition so why not just stick with that??). I also just don’t want to diminish this woman’s strength of embarking on this challenge of starting over by letting it be because some man made it possible. I think single mothers are incredible people and that it takes guts and determination to by alone and raise a kid and this movie just doesn’t seem to have that same kind of idea. So…go see for yourself. Maybe I am a cynic and cant appreciate a solid good ending but maybe, just maybe, I want that happiness and success to come to the woman from her own work (because we all know women work incredibly hard for their families) and not just from luck.