LogFAQs > #979758561

Okay, FINALLY hoping to be back on track of this.

Thanks for the rec, @wallmasterz - here we go!

The Room (2003)
Written & Directed by: Tommy Wiseau
Starring: Tommy Wiseau, Juliette Danielle, Greg Sestero, Philip Hadiman, Carolyn Minnott
Previous status: Never seen

"Do you understand life? DO YOU?"

Seriously, what the hell did I just watch? This is like if there was some cross-breed between a porn movie, a soap opera, and r/AmITheAsshole... like that's how "out there" this is. And despite that, it's somehow both absolutely fantastic and genuinely terrible at the same time. VERY FEW movies manage to do SBIG right, but this is absolutely one of them, and it does belong in the conversation for "Best Worst Movie Ever Made" with the likes of Troll 2.

Let's just start with how bad the acting is. For the most part, everyone just cannot deliver lines in a way that feels like a real person would - actor/director/writer/producer/bossman Tommy Wiseau being the worst culprit as lead man Johnny, to the point I thought he'd been overdubbed early on. The exceptions are Sestero, who plays Johnny's best friend Mark who lives upstairs, and Robyn Paris, who plays Johnny's fiancee Lisa's best friend Michelle; these two somehow manage to deliver some of their lines brilliantly while sounding absolutely cringe in delivering others. It's amazing, honestly. But this type of acting are where I get the "porn movie" part from - along with all the fucking.

And there's a lot of that. Four actual sex scenes plus an oral quickie. None of the actual acts are shown, but for a 99-minute film, that's certainly a lot of fucking. Most movies I've seen so far that contain intercourse have had one or two sex scenes. This one also does have BOOBIES, which I know I have to mention because BOOBIES. But because Lisa is bored with her life with Johnny, she decides to start seducing Mark, who is reluctant to go along with it because he doesn't want to anger his best friend. Her mother doesn't like this because she sees Johnny as her son-in-law, the kind of guy that can provide for Lisa and protect her. And this leads to an interesting conversation about how you don't marry for love, you marry for economic reasons. Which is probably accurate, but that doesn't stop me from being picky. I certainly wouldn't want a skank like Lisa to pull shit like she does.

That shit includes lies that Johnny hit her and that her pregnancy test came back positive. She is just a nasty person through and through who is too afraid to tell her fiance the truth, something he feels she owes him. And let's be real: Dishonesty destroys relationships, and the worst cases end up like this. Sadly, in the end, Lisa and Mark's affair gets caught by some guy we don't know - apparently they had to replace Peter midway through the movie with another friend - and soon everybody knows about it, including Johnny. This leads to a physical altercation between Johnny and Mark and Johnny locking himself in the bathroom. Lisa decides to leave him and she calls Mark, not realizing that Johnny had tapped the phone with a tape recorder. He confronts her on her way out and she does not care. As I expected and feared, Johnny kills himself (though I'm not sure why he had the gun - if that drug dealer had possession of it, the cops would've confiscated it). Having heard the shot from upstairs, Mark and Lisa run down to find Johnny dead, and Johnny's semi-adopted college-age son Danny runs too to cry over his body as the police, most certainly summoned by another neighbor who heard the shot, arrive. Mark shuns Lisa and tells her to get lost, so because of her adulterous actions, she ends up with nothing except the guilt that she killed a man who loved her.

Needless to say, there were times I felt that this movie was satire of some kind, though I couldn't quite figure out what it was trying to make fun of, simply because of how many things get abandoned suddenly (Lisa's mom having cancer, Peter's character entirely, Johnny playing football in tuxedos with the groomsmen for no reason), and how Mark suddenly shaved without anyone noticing. There were just no actual direction here - it was all inside the head of someone seemingly insane, and boy do I relate to that. I have ideas that work so well but actually making the narrative coherent is more work than it seems, likely because of my own mood swings. I have felt betrayed numerous times, including when it wasn't there, and people seem to disappoint me too often - which is all a result of my own life experiences.

Honestly, this is just one of those movies I have no idea what to make of. Again, it's both great and awful at once - the ultimate in unintentional comedy. I'd thus give it a 3/5 - I might want to get it again, sure, but I'm not gonna go out of my way.

At any rate, this needs to go back to the library tomorrow. Or I could renew it if I don't get there. We shall see.