15 November 2010

The Room

A-scene-from-The-Room.-001

Tommy Wiseau is an idiot. He got all of his writing and directorial ideas from softcore pornography, and though it was a good idea to make a movie about this one time his girlfriend ditched him. At least that’s what I got out of this horrendous piece of unintentionally hilarious pig vomit.

I’m not alone in my opinion; along with Troll 2 and a few others, this is held pretty much universally as one of the worst movies ever made. I had to watch it though because it’s also hailed as being funny in its ineptitude, especially in the performance of the mastermind Tommy Wiseau himself. Tommy wrote, directed, and produced the feature, and I think he would have been fine with playing every part but had to settle with the protagonist because he doesn’t have boobs.

So the story, as far as I could tell, is about Jonny (Tommy), the perfect man. Jonny has no faults aside from being overly trusting and a little too philanthropic. No way is he a total douche. His girlfriend is a two-faced witch who lovingly fondles him in the two-hundred twenty-seven awkward sex scenes while repeatedly claiming to be bored and out of love with him in conversations with pretty much everyone else, such as her bitchy mother and Jonny’s best friend Mark, who she manages to seduce somehow. There’s also the very weird man-child Denny who is apparently a drug user and is in love with Jonny’s girl, Jonny himself, and some other girl who we never see. Anyway it can all be reduced to this: nobody appreciates Jonny and he kills himself because they all betray him.

If you’re not cracking up already I’ll explain why this is funny. Tommy Wiseau is a terrible actor with an accent that would put the Governator to shame. He forces his awkwardly constructed dialogue on his terrible cast in what I think is an attempt to make his own acting look better, but it fails. Tommy thinks the only way to introduce a character into a scene is by greeting them with a “Oh hi [name]!,” no matter what the situation. His emotional breakdowns consist of languidly pulling drawers out of dressers and haphazardly knocking pictures off of shelves. His best insult is badly imitating a chicken, and everyone else seems to think this is genius. His classic line “You are tearing me apart Lisa!” pretty much makes the movie.

I had some friends come over last night while I was watching it, and one of them kept referring to it as a “show,” because it really looks like a bad soap opera instead of a professionally filmed feature. Everything is bad; the sets, the cinematography, the editing, the acting, the dialogue, the music, and even the length of 100 minutes is too much. It’s kind of amazing that Tommy needed four million dollars to make this thing.

I need to watch a good movie now.

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