Earlier this year a film was released entitled Best Worst Movie, a documentary about the legacy of Troll 2, a movie often cited as the worst ever made. As such it has developed a cult following and a devoted “fanbase” which attends screenings across the country. I have seen about a half hour of Troll 2, and indeed it is entertainingly terrible, but the arthouse set tends to nominate another film for worst ever made: Tommy Wiseau’s The Room.
The phrase “so bad it’s good” has been beaten to death about various movies, but The Room is not that. It’s so bad that on some level it must be a masterpiece. It’s an antithesis to the very idea of filmmaking, an absolute black hole that sucks you in and spits you out in an alternate universe in which Wiseau is the one and only deity. There is not a moment of skill or competence within its 99 minute running time. The sets do not resemble real locations, the characters are never even mildly convincing, and the writing is baffling in its incomprehensibility.
What’s it about? Well, there’s Lisa, who is certainly not human, but perhaps some form of android for whom “logic” was not programmed. She is the “future wife” of the protagonist Johnny as played by the film’s director, writer, producer AND executive producer (?) Tommy Wiseau. She has become bored with him and she seeks a relationship with Johnny’s friend Mark. Mark succumbs, and the rest of the film deals with the love triangle, awkwardly made love scenes and all. In fact, the characters don’t have sex during these scenes as much as stare at each other and throw rose petals. Not to mention these scenes are endless, and shoehorned in so Tommy Wiseau could hop into bed with a naked woman, however Mark gets a sex scene with Lisa as well. Each one os filmed the same, bad R&B and all. Not to get too graphic, but at least McLovin’ kind of knew what he was doing.
If I knew nothing about who made the film I would think Tommy Wiseau was an actor who was forced against his will to star in this film. He is a charisma vacuum. He delivers his lines with the panache of an inebriated Ben Stein. Also there was obviously a great amount of looping done with him, implying that there was even LESS energy on set, or he just mouthed the words instead of speaking them. Of course, the sentences these actors have to put together are something strange indeed, and I don’t think there’s a conversation from beginning to end at which point any two characters are talking about the same thing. Take this infamous flower shop scene, in which Wiseau must have written the lines and then put them in the film in random order:
But of course my favorite scene on the rooftop: (Children don’t listen, there’s an s-word!)
It’s these small moments that make The Room so famous. Mostly it’s Wiseau’s mind-boggling non-deliveries of all of his incomprehensible lines. This is a part that is supposed to show growing frustration over his romantic situation, but Wiseau writes his own character as an absolute dunce who can’t figure out what’s going on, but it’s tearing him APART, Lisa!
I want to avoid making this post a collection of YouTube videos, but it’s a little too easy. By staying with these three I am showing restraint. I won’t even think of showing you the clip where Lisa’s mom finds out she DEFINITELY has breast cancer.
SPOILERS AHEAD? DOES IT MATTER?
Eventually the tension between himself, Lisa and Mark becomes too great for Johnny to handle. He discovers that Lisa has been cheating on him, and after a “fight” at a party Johnny discovers that he is fed up with this, world. After he throws a bunch of stuff around he kills himself, and only then does Lisa realize the error of her ways. This is where it becomes clear that Wiseau was trying for something personal. Maybe he was cheated on and this ending was his way of saying “you’ll miss me when I’m gone!” or maybe he just kind of wrote crap down. Probably the latter.
However, since The Room has developed a cult following Tommy Wiseau has become self-aware. He even claims that it was intended as a comedy from the beginning. I call bull on that one, Tommy. Not to mention that if it was intentional, then that ruins the entire enjoyment of the film for me. Why would I want to watch someone’s INTENTIONAL crap? As a contrast, the director of Troll 2, Claudio Fragasso, is still convinced he’s made the Citizen Kane of goblin movies. Since we’ve all alerted Wiseau to the awfulness of The Room, he is now no doubt going to try and replicate it. His next film is going to be The House That Drips Blood on Alex, a comedy-horror film that will air on Comedy Central on Halloween. I doubt there will even be a moment of cheap entertainment there, as he will TRY to be horrible. If The Room was meant to be serious, it is a masterpiece of bad filmmaking, a “peak” that no one will ever be able to replicate in a very long time. If it was intended as crap, then it’s no better than an average YouTube video. I understand if Wiseau realized his film was terrible after the fact, but if in the process he thought he was making a comedy I no longer think this movie is worth talking about.
Intentional or not, The Room has developed a following that gathers to see it at midnight shows across the country, many of which Wiseau attends himself. They laugh, they chear, they talk along, and they love every second of it. The Room is a movie that many people derive pleasure from viewing after viewing. There are groups who will no doubt look down on people who watch bad movies on purpose, but as long as people are having fun they can keep their stupid comments in their pocket.
Rating: There is no star rating that applies to this film. It exists outside any possible rating system which could possibly be created.
P.S.- As I write this now “Coconut” by Harry Nilsson just came up on my iTunes shuffle. That would have been a much more appropriate end credits song than what is in the film presently. Come to think of it, it’s always an appropriate end credits song.
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