I've been writing these goofy little reviews for a few years now, and I've discussed over two hundred movies in that time. Some of them were pretty good, and some of them were pretty bad. And some of them were okay. But there's one movie that I can't even begin to describe. It's a movie that, as the saying goes, must be seen to be believed. It's a movie so completely, utterly incompetent that if Ed Wood were alive today, he'd feel a little bit better about his body of work. The movie in question is an obscure little flick titled The Room.If you've never heard of it, don't feel bad. Most normal people have no idea this movie even exists. But it's slowly developing a cult following, thanks in large part to a series of successful midnight showings in Los Angeles. These midnight showings have even spawned audience participation similar to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But while Rocky Horror isn't really all that bad of a movie, The Room is so terrible that it's ridiculous. It is so laughably awful that it challenges your sanity with each passing moment, and by the end, you won't be the same as you were when you entered.
This is normally the point in the review where I would do a plot synopsis, but I'm not sure if The Room has a plot. The whole thing is scene after scene of surreal nonsense that never goes anywhere. But I guess I'll take one for the team and try to make sense of this insanity. From what I can ascertain, The Room is about a love triangle involving three of the most banal characters ever captured on film.
One of these characters is Johnny (Tommy Wiseau), an overly melodramatic weirdo whose bizarre European accent is thick to the point of nigh-indecipherability. There's also Johnny's fiancée, Lisa (Juliette Danielle), who spends pretty much the whole movie sitting around doing nothing. She's been dating Johnny for either five or seven years; I'm a little fuzzy on the exact number, since the dialogue often contradicts itself. But whether it be five or seven, that still doesn't change the fact that Lisa's been having an extended affair with Mark (Greg Sestero), Johnny's best friend. I know he's Johnny's best friend because we're told this little bit of information approximately eleven trillion times over the course of the movie. That's the basic plot of the movie, I assume. But it's so horrifyingly monotonous and repetitive that there is nothing even remotely resembling a story.
As I said in the opening paragraph, I cannot accurately describe The Room. It's kinda like this: Have you ever overheard someone say something that upset you for no other reason than because you thought what they said sounded stupid? Now imagine a handful of people that made you feel that way for an hour and a half. That's The Room. The entire movie is a bunch of terrible actors saying things that can and will hurt your brain, and it's a pain that never, ever ends. Ever. Not even when the closing credits start rolling.
Why must the memory of this awful movie torture me so? My only hope of purging it is in the writing of this review, because The Room is one of those incredibly rare movies whose existence I continually fail to comprehend. I've seen it with my own two eyes more than once, and yet I still cannot believe that this movie was actually made. It is perhaps the most epic train wreck ever captured on celluloid. And just like a real train wreck, you may not want to look, but you feel compelled to regardless. It is, in short, a movie that is mesmerizing in its inadequacy.
The Room is the brainchild of Tommy Wiseau, who directed, wrote, produced, starred in, and even self-distributed this masterpiece of cinematic ineptitude. The movie may be hopelessly terrible, but I guess I should applaud Wiseau for having faith in his project. He funded and created the whole thing, and even leased a billboard in a prominent part of Hollywood for no less than five years so he could promote the movie. (I wish I was making that billboard thing up. Google it if you don't believe me.) But while I respect Wiseau for doing it by himself, I'm still flabbergasted by how bad the movie is. There are no words in any recorded language that properly describe the sheer idiocy of The Room. I'm having a hard time even trying to decide where to start critiquing the movie, because every facet of it is so staggeringly bad.
I guess I should follow my usual routine and lead off with Wiseau's direction. Wiseau supposedly culled together six million dollars to make the movie, a number that absolutely blows my mind. There is no way this movie cost that much money to make. It looks like a cheap softcore porno movie, for crying out loud. (And that's no joke. I actually thought it was a softcore porno during my first experience with the movie, when Cartoon Network aired it as an April Fools' Day joke during their "Adult Swim" programming block last year.) I honestly think that the budget must have gone into camera equipment, keeping that billboard up for so long, and paying the licensing fees for the use of "Happy Birthday To You." Because beyond that, I don't have the slightest idea how Wiseau could have possibly spent six million dollars on this. That money sure as hell isn't on the screen.
And if any of that money went into the cameras, you'd think he could have afforded to hire someone to actually pay attention to whether or not the shots were in focus. He obviously didn't have someone doing that on set, because quite a bit of the movie ends up looking blurry. I can only assume that nobody noticed that the shots were out of focus. That's just astounding. I mean, Manos: The Hands of Fate got pretty much everything wrong, but at least Hal Warren managed to shoot the movie in focus! Wiseau couldn't even get that right!
Beyond that, Wiseau's direction is full of odd decisions. For example, actor Kyle Vogt quit halfway through production, and was replaced by Greg Ellery. Instead of going back and reshooting Vogt's scenes with Ellery in his place, Wiseau had his new actor do the scenes Vogt had yet to film and expected us to believe that there was no difference. Ellery is credited as a separate character, but the fact that he just shows up and acts like he was there the whole time is just insane. Wouldn't it have made more sense to redo all of the other scenes so it would have been consistent?
Another odd decision involves some scenes that take place on the roof of a building. That wouldn't have been so bad if Wiseau hadn't handled it so strangely. Instead of filming the scenes on an actual rooftop in San Francisco (where the movie takes place), he shot them on a set built in a Los Angeles parking lot and used green screen effects to add ugly, unconvincing shots of the San Francisco skyline to the background. It just feels dumb. Surely securing a filming location in the real San Francisco wouldn't have taken up too much of that supposed six million dollars. It wouldn't have improved the movie any, but at least it would have saved it from some cheap Photoshop job.
His script is remarkably nonsensical to boot. And it's not just the preposterous dialogue, either. The whole thing is just an amalgam of infuriatingly pointless scenes and gaping plot holes. You would expect the revelation that Lisa's mother has cancer would be a huge plot point, yet it's never mentioned beyond one scene. The line is even delivered in such a nonchalant way that makes it seems like it's no big deal to begin with. An ancillary character runs afoul of a drug dealer he owes money to, but once the scene is over, the character's debt and apparent drug problem are summarily forgotten. The stock reply for all their problems: "Don't worry about it." Cancer and owing money to a violent drug dealer are nothing to worry about? Okay, Tommy, if you say so.
There's another scene where Johnny's friends show up in tuxedos. There are some vague references to Johnny's wedding photos, but none of it makes any sense since there hasn't even been a wedding yet. The whole thing becomes moot since they just go out to some back alley and play football while standing three feet apart. Why? I don't know. I'm not sure Wiseau knows either.
But while we're on the topic of the script, I wanted to talk about the characters. There are two I want to focus on specifically. The first of is Wiseau's character. Johnny is a fantastic guy who would do anything for his friends. He's an absolutely wonderful person, and there isn't anyone who'll hesitate to say so. The praise for Johnny is practically ubiquitous, even coming from Lisa and Mark as they go behind his back. Gee, I wonder what Wiseau was trying to say here.I've also heard people suggest that The Room may be somewhat autobiographical, that Wiseau had his heart broken by an ex-girlfriend who was sleeping with one of his friends on the side. Whether that's true or not, I have no idea. But if it is, shame on her. Her infidelity caused Wiseau to vent his frustrations and heartache with one of the worst movies ever.
The other character I wanted to talk about is Denny, played by Philip Haldiman. Denny is perhaps the most socially awkward character I've ever seen. He's supposed to be a college student (and has both his tuition and rent paid for by Johnny, further proving his supposed sainthood), yet he acts like he's six years old or something. He's got that drug problem that is mentioned all of once as well as having an unrequited crush on Lisa (to the point that he'll bluntly ask if he can kiss her), and when he interrupts a potential romantic interlude between Johnny and Lisa, he reveals that he "likes to watch" before instigating a pillow fight. That's not cute, it's creepy and weird. I'm not sure how any of the other characters tolerate him, to be honest. I've read a lot of articles about The Room that theorize that Denny may have some kind of intellectual disability or mental defect. But my guess is that he was raised by wolves from birth until just before the beginning of the movie. That's the only explanation that I can come up with for why Denny is so awkward.
The more I try to make sense of that madness, however, the faster I'll end up with irreversible brain damage. So let's move on to the last facet I have to cover, the acting. I don't want to; I'd rather just skip it and rush to the end so I can move along with things that don't bother me so much. I mean, if you haven't seen The Room, then you have no idea how truly awful the acting is. The cast is so bad, so mind-bogglingly terrible, that it makes Elizabeth Berkley's performance in Showgirls rival Meryl Streep. But I've already come this far, I guess I'll have to keep going. Ugh... why do I do this to myself?
If I must critique the cast, let's start with the movie's star and creator, Wiseau. It's hard for me to fathom just how terrible he is. The really sad part is that he's so sincere about it that it only makes him look worse. He obviously believes in what he's doing, but when your acting ability and material are so poor, self-confidence won't get you anywhere.Wiseau's super-melodramatic style is the source of enough humor, but when combined with his thick European accent and his tenuous grasp on the English language, you can't help yourself but to laugh at him. I hate saying that, but it's true. I honestly cannot watch a single second of Wiseau's so-called acting without giggling maniacally and asking myself if he really expects anyone to take him seriously. His body language is wildly animated to the point of making him look like a madman, and his line delivery feels not of this earth. Wiseau supposedly re-recorded much of his dialogue in post-production, which makes his screen presence feel so strange that even now I wonder if he's actually a real person. He just can't be... can he?
There are other people in this movie too, but Wiseau is so outrageous that he completely overshadows everyone else. But as much as he dominates the movie, I really should point out some of the cast's remaining members. They're just as guilty of being in this movie as he is, after all.
Playing the female lead is Juliette Danielle, who — from what I can tell by this movie alone — is certainly no actress. You get the feeling that Wiseau just pulled her in off the street, handed her a script, and told her to start saying her lines. It looks like she's just following whatever directions Wiseau gave her some of the time, while spending the rest of the time looking like she'd rather be doing anything else on the face of the planet. And all of the time, she's not good in any sort of definition of the word.
I must admit that I do feel a bit sorry for her, almost to the point of pity. I say this primarily because Danielle was stuck in the unenviable task of having to shoot a sex scene with Wiseau. It's one of the least erotic things I've ever seen, to the point that it's borderline nightmare fuel, and this poor girl had to be a part of it. The guy looks like what would happen if one of the monsters from Gremlins was trying to disguise himself as a human, and judging by how the scene looks, it appears as if he was trying to make love to her belly button. And according to an interview with one of her co-stars that I read somewhere online, The Room is not just her feature film debut, but the sex scene was shot on her very first day of filming. Could you imagine showing up to the set of your first movie and having to be dry-humped by Tommy Wiseau on the very first day?! Either Danielle's a real trooper or she has no sense at all, because I would have walked right off the set and never looked back.
And playing the third point of our convoluted love triangle is Greg Setsero, who also worked as the movie's line producer, helped with casting, and was credited as one of Wiseau's five (!) assistants during production. I guess Wiseau couldn't do everything, which is kind of a shame because it would have been funnier if he had. Anyway, back to Sestero. Similar to Danielle, Sestero's delivery is stiff, like he wasn't prepared to actually be in front of the camera. Though since I've heard he was roped into acting only three days before filming started, maybe that could be expected? Either way, Sestero doesn't really make much of an impression as an actor. He's not the worst actor in the movie by a long shot, but I can't say he does anything worth watching either.
I can say that about pretty much the entire cast outside of Wiseau, though. None of them give any reason to pay attention to them. That's probably why none of the reviews posted online mention anybody outside of The Room's creator. With the exception of Dan Janjigian, who is actually pretty good as the drug dealer that Denny upsets, the rest of the cast are just kinda there. But then again, if you were stuck in this movie, would you bother putting forth any sort of effort?
Even the movie's soundtrack fails. Not only is Mladen Milicevic's score terrible, but the various songs that are heard throughout The Room all sound like the absolute worst of mid-'90s R&B slow jams. It's as if Wiseau wasn't satisfied with just a bad movie, so he needed bad music too. The worst offender is a song called "You're My Rose," which sounds like somebody with no singing talent doing a really bad karaoke version of a TLC song. But I guess if the movie was going to be a pain to watch, it was going to be a pain to listen to too.
If you ever hear someone shrieking in terror for no immediately discernible reason, it's probably because they've seen The Room and have been left traumatized by how truly horrendous it is. But for all the negative things I've said about it, I cannot recommend The Room enough. You have to see this movie. You need to drop everything you're doing right now and find a copy of it. Go to Amazon and buy it, sign up for a Netflix account and rent it, or even download a bootleg if you have to, because you must see this movie. I say this because I don't want to be alone in my pain. Before seeing The Room, I didn't know it was possible for a movie to be both wretchedly stupid and unbelievably brilliant at the same time. But Tommy Wiseau has given us proof that it can be done. And not only can it be done, but it can be made into an art form. I can't justify giving it any higher than one star, but it is a movie beyond star ratings or even critiquing in general. The Room simply is.
Final Rating: *
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