Some movies are good. Some movies are bad. Some movies are the worst. Since I am DEFINITELY one of the film critic elite, I’ll sit back on my silk furniture, eat chocolate covered everything and trudge through the snake pit of Hollywood’s worst undertakings so you don’t have to, fulfilling both my quota for a contribution to society and your insatiable need to feast on laffs by the dozen!
Hey guys. How was your week? Pretty good? I hope so. Mine was alright too. I didn’t do too much. You know, work and school, the Super Bowl, but pretty normal I guess.
Here’s one thing though: I WATCHED THE ROOM.
You guys, I can’t tell you how unreal this movie is.
At first, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to do The Room for TWMDMYES. It was almost too bad (read: too easy). Then after watching this utterly baffling poop disaster, we watched some of the DVD extras, including an interview with the movie’s enigmatic writer, director, producer and star, Tommy Wiseau.
Now, to you or I, Tommy Wiseau would appear to be an absolute ultra-creep to the max, but to everyone else he appears to be an absolute ultra-creep to the max. He is the worst. He’s like a greasy Arnold Schwarzenegger, but not successful or charming.
He is a mystery, but more on that later.
The Room is a catastrophe, everyone. The problem with the movie is that it’s so awful it’s nearly perfect.
I guess it’s really about the struggles of human interaction. It’s the Citizen Kane of terrible ideas and barfing all over yourself.
Basically, Johnny (Wiseau) and his fiancée, Lisa, are about to get married, but it turns out that Lisa doesn’t love him anymore. Lisa says it to almost everyone she talks to including her mother, who stops by for three minutes to talk to Lisa about how awesome Johnny is and that she should stay with Johnny because he’s just the best (he’s not).
But seriously, WHOSE MOTHER STOPS BY FOR ONLY THREE MINUTES? NOT MINE!
The best (worst) part about the mother scene at the beginning is that Lisa (who sucks) tells her mother she doesn’t love Johnny, and then her mother says that she just found out she has breast cancer. Then they MOVE ON, and they never mention it ever again in the whole movie.
So Lisa, who makes it her mantra to tell EVERYONE that she doesn’t love Johnny anymore, falls in love with Johnny’s best friend, Mark (played by I don’t care)! Twist!
The relationship between Johnny and Mark is interesting (nope). Mark seems like a normal dude who plays basketball, and Johnny’s an incredible weirdo with awful, long black greasy hair and some weird accent*. They shouldn’t be friends! But I guess Milo and Otis were friends, too.
Anyway, Johnny gets super mad (yep) about Mark and Lisa doing it behind his back, and he kills himself at his own birthday party.
That’s it, then!
Tragic? Nope. At least not in plot or story. I would say it’s tragic (read: hilarious) that Tommy Wiseau couldn’t get any studio to fund the movie, so he paid $6 million out of his own pocket to do it. That’s both impressive commitment and blatant alcoholism.
Anyway, the best part about the movie is how little Wiseau understands about American culture. I think he genuinely believes that Americans are always holding a sports ball because in every scene when it’s just him and the boys hanging out (like regular people do), one of them is ALWAYS HOLDING A FOOTBALL OR A BASKETBALL. WHAT? Do we do this? Am I weird for not doing this?
Not only that, but every single person in a café orders cheesecake. I guess that’s not that weird, except that it definitely is.
I’m sorry, the best part is actually the fact that with 89 percent of Wiseau’s lines are dubbed over and not mixed. Like, at all. But that’s fine; I’m sure Wiseau had to worry about learning to throw a football correctly (unsuccessful) and finding the cheesiest ’90’s R&B (“You are my rose/you are my rose/ you are my ro-ose”) to appropriately score the horrible sex scenes (successful) that he probably didn’t have time to mix. I understand; things pile up.
It’s just an awful disaster of a movie that unfortunately is actually worth watching because it’s so bafflingly, laughably appalling.
It’s just really sloppy dialogue while holding sports balls, simple and elegant.
Oh, and also, the actor that plays Johnny’s friend, Peter, changes mid-way through the movie. Oops!
The thing is, Tommy Wiseau, despite being an awful actor, an awful director, an awful writer and an OK producer is absolutely, completely narcissistic. I’m afraid he genuinely believes that The Room is a masterpiece, and that’s the real tragedy.
So please, for Tommy’s sake, watch The Room once, watch his interview and go outside to play football wearing your wedding tuxedo, you know, NORMAL STUFF.
Then think long and hard about what you just did.
I give it five out of five “Oof!”s
* Tommy Wiseau hassome sort of accent, but he refuses to recognize that he’s anything but American. I can’t tell if it’s French, Austrian, completely fake or if Tommy Wiseau is an alien. Let me know if you hear anything!
