Say what you will about this God-forsaken, roach-infested, unsanitary fucking tourist trap of a restaurant, but it's alive, and that counts for something.

Cast/Crew:

There has never been a great restaurant movie. Ever. A couple have been decent. A couple have been successful. However, there has never been one that has been GREAT. This is fairly remarkable, considering that probably at least sixty percent of the entertainment industry (and maybe even the general public) has worked at a restaurant at some point in their lives. The best movies are the ones that manage to walk the fine line of being entertaining and honest at the same time. The movies that really resonate with people are the ones that capture the imagination while at the same time still being able to be something the average person can relate to. Unfortunately, all of the restaurant movies to this point have failed at one or both of these goals. Some romanticize the experience at the expense of reality. Some suffer from bad writing and worse jokes. Others are just simply poorly made. None have managed to be great.

Times Square Hustle’s main character is not a person. It is a place, and the script should be read with this is mind. That place is a Times Square restaurant called Hucklebees populated with every kind of person and walk of life imaginable. And like any character, it has its own moods, idiosyncracies, faults, and values. The staff of Hucklebees is exactly like its clientele, a group of people from every background, class, and nationality. The heart of the movie is about how these people interact with each other, and about how they interact with the customers that they serve.

The movie begins from the perspective of a white early to mid 20’s waiter named Rob. In the opening sequence that he narrates (which will have a similar vibe to the school montage from Donnie Darko), we get a tour of all of the characters and environments of Hucklebees (the dining room, kitchen, bar, and tables) as we watch him go through all of the steps of getting a drink order to a table he has in the middle of the Friday night dinner rush. From his voice over we learn that it is his last shift, as he is leaving the restaurant, and dropping his dream of being an actor to take an entry level job with a law firm as a paralegal. We also learn about the type of person it takes to work there, the types of people that eat there, and the various reasons and rationales that people have for working there. By the end of it, we have seen every character, what they do, and more importantly, we have an understanding of the environment that we are in.

The movie then rewinds a few hours to just before the shifts starts where all of the night shift waiters are gathering together for “directional” (a.k.a. the pre-shift meeting). We are formally introduced to many of the main characters here as they arrive for the shift. The most important of these are Jay (white, mid-30’s), a waiter that has a serious cocaine problem as well as serious issues with the fact that he has been working at Hucklebees way too long, and is slowly watching his life pass him by. He is dating one of the managers, Crystal, a bossy, white 19 year-old on a power trip who is consumed by the fact that she feels (rightfully so) that none of the waiters respect her. Mirella (Eastern European, late 30’s) is the abrasive head manager and is basically who Crystal will probably become in about 20 years. There is Shoeb (mid-40’s, Pakistani, and a bit overweight) who is essentially a stand-up comic trapped in a managerial position. Pedro (waiter, late 20’s, Puerto Rican) is a cross between George Costanza, Don Juan, and Homer Simpson, and Brett (waiter, white, mid-20’s, balding) is an intelligent, angry, sarcastic server. We meet Fred (black, early 20’s) a quiet, smart server, Olga (early 20’s) a former Russian mail order bride, Kristen (early 20’s), a cute blonde server, and Chelsea (early 20’s) an attractive lipstick lesbian. We also meet Fabricio (early 20’s) who is the default class clown, and Ricky (early 20’s), the Midwestern new guy on his first shift. From directional we are basically introduced to many of the policies, procedures, and inner-restaurant relationships that we will see play out over the course of the movie.

Directional ends, and it is time to be introduced to the kitchen and its staff, which is made up predominantly by black ex-cons and south American labor. The major characters in the kitchen staff are Jerome (black head cook, late 20’s), his sidekicks Jose (the expo, Hispanic, early 20’s) and Chuck (black, late 20’s, stoner cook). Ashanti (a black cook who is having a relationship with a young white hostess Natalie) and Tony (the Louis Gossett Jr. lookalike kitchen manager) are the other main characters in the kitchen. It is here that we learn how the kitchen staff interacts, as well as about their mostly adversarial/amusing relationship with the servers. We find out that Rob is one of the few servers that has a good relationship with the kitchen guys, and that the kitchen has a very low tolerance for new people (they give Ricky the new guy a pretty hard time).

The next section is called “The Calm Before The Storm”, and it is here where we watch the restaurant interact during the quiet time before the dinner rush hits. We meet the last few characters on the staff: Gina (The hot bartender that the whole staff unsuccessfully flirts with), Rokoni (a clueless Indian busboy that Rob and Jay have essentially made their pet), Jamie (a funny looking male server with an offbeat sense of humor), Terry (your typical Massachusetts frat type waiter), and Stacy (a loud, black funny server). It is here we get a glimpse into Jay’s coke problem and some of the reasons he has it. It is also where the servers start to interact with the typical customers that come into the restaurant: the ghetto tables, the southerners, foreigners, tourists, business types, and theater goers that make up the clientele. It is here that we get an inside and somewhat shocking look at how your drinks, food, salads, to-go orders, and dishes get made and cleaned in a generic corporate restaurant. We also learn about a lot of the racial and social prejudices that the staff have developed as they deal with their customers, and also why it’s not a good idea to have the wrong waiters lead a birthday celebration.

We then move into the heart of the movie, which is the dinner rush section (called “Rushing Roullette”). It is here where we see the restaurant operating at maximum capacity, as a 2 hour wait develops and the staff runs around attempting to keep their heads above water as they deal with the seemingly neverending avalanche of customers. Among the highlights in this section are: The cockroach problem, the importance of the microwave, how severs react to shitty tips, why servers have issues with hostesses, Rob letting a young black teen get out of paying some of his check so he can avoid being embarrassed in front of his girlfriend (he says he’ll come back later that night with Rob’s money, but Rob doesn’t believe him), how Jay and Crystal’s relationship has a trickle down effect on the rest of the staff, how a kitchen can turn into a borderline strip club, why your food comes out cold when it’s busy, what happens when someone tries to walk out on a check, and how it’s really pretty amazing that a busy restaurant can operate at all. It all finishes with a visual montage that pretty much sums up the restaurant experience.

After this, we move forward to “it’s 10pm, do you know where your gratuity is?” which essentially deals with the strategies many waiters have for screwing their customers over so they can get a bigger tip, and why experienced waiters make a lot more money than the new guys.

“Anatomy of a Crash” is where we watch the new guy, Ricky, come apart at the seams over the period of 30minutes as he slowly becomes Private Pyle from “Full Metal Jacket”, and more or less shows why some people aren’t cut out to be waiters, and how a whole bunch of little things can slowly ruin a person’s life. We watch as Rob, who has made his money and knows he’ll get “cut”(sent home) first because it’s his last night, gives his tables to Ricky, who has been getting screwed on tips all night, so he can get out of there and let the new guy make some money. Pedro finds out about this, and gives his tables to Ricky as well, who is thrilled to finally be able to make some money. Unfortunately, a mini rush hits, and Ricky finds himself with 15 tables in a restaurant that isn’t even busy at the moment, and he has absolutely no way to get them everything they need. From there, we watch him slowly melt down as customers get angrier, his food doesn’t come out, management finds out what is happening, and Ricky falls into a black hole he can’t get out of. Meanwhile, the rest of the restaurant is calmly going about their business, as Rob gets Gina’s number, plays a prank on Shoeb, goes and smokes a joint with Jerome and Jay, and is generally having a good time. It all culminates with Ricky completely flipping out, pouring a tray of drinks on himself, and tossing a couple thousand dollars in the air as the rest of the restaurant looks on astonished.

The final section of the movie is titled “c’est la vie”. We watch Rob’s last moments in the restaurant as he does his sidework, gets checked out, and turns in his money. We see Jay and Crystal make up, although none of Jay’s problems are solved. We watch as the staff sends Rob off by dousing him in whip cream and cake, as he describes why he’s going to miss this place, or at least the concept of the place, and why he is beginning to question whether he’s making the right decision. He feels as if he’s giving up his dream and in a lot of ways, his soul, for security and stability. He cleans himself up, and as he leaves the restaurant the last time, he sees the black teen who couldn’t pay his check earlier. The kid has his money, and Rob takes it, blown away that the kid came back to pay him. He leaves the restaurant for the last time and goes to the bar. We flashforward with a long tracking through the bar where the whole staff is assembled getting plastered and having a good time, without a care in the world. Rob and Jay have a conversation as they watch this, essentially summing up the theme of the movie, which is: is it better to live in the short term, slowly watching your unrealistic dreams pass you by working in a restaurant, growing older, with no future, and knowing that there’s going to be a price to pay in the end? Or is it better to have no dreams at all, wallowing away behind a cubicle, with the sole consolation being a pension plan and health insurance, living in a well-kept cage? Essentially, is it better to live unrealistically in the fast lane or die slowly knowing you’ll be taken care of, There’s no real answer to this question. Instead the movie finishes on Rob sipping from his beer, looking at the Hucklebees staff live it up, looking like he doesn’t want to leave.

Anyway, what may not come across here is that Times Square Hustle is for the most part a straight up comedy. It’s meant to be funny, and to mostly just make people laugh. The writing is designed to bring up the larger themes without trying to spell them out, and show a way of life that a large segment of the American population lives everyday, without trying to glorify it or tear it down, but at the same time show why it’s still interesting. There is a story in it, but it’s mostly a character movie, and it’s mostly about regular people making the best or worst of the situation they’re in. It’s also about, on a larger scale, some of the prejudices in our society and how these prejudices affect people when they are forced into a place where they have to interact with every single one of them on a daily basis. It’s an honest story, largely about actual people, and collected true experiences taken in over a two year period working in the restaurant business. When it’s all boiled down, the tone and feel of the movie is cross between Do The Right Thing and Clerks, with a little bit of The Office thrown in there. One thing that can be guaranteed, though, is that anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant will identify with a large part of it, and most of them will find it funny… and true.