The Good, The Bad and The Critic

Established on March 19th, 2012 and pioneered by film fanatic Michael J. Carlisle. The Good, The Bad and The Critic will analyze classic and contemporary films from all corners of the globe. This title references Sergei Leone's influential spaghetti western The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

Friday, September 5, 2014

The Room Review- By Michael Carlisle


Title: The Room
Year: 2003
Director: Tommy Wiseau
Country: US
Language: English

It is impossible to review Tommy Wiseau's The Room with a straight face, mainly because it is awful, everybody knows it is awful, but we choose to watch it anyways. It fails on every level, but many find it entertaining because it's such a failure. Thus in recent years it has become a cult phenomenon, on par with Plan 9 From Outer Space. The cult following Director Wiseau has gained is almost frightening.

Johnny (Tommy Wiseau) is a successful banker who lives happily in a San Francisco townhouse with his fiance, Lisa (Juliette Danielle) . One day she decides to seduce his best friend out of boredom. Will their lives ever be the same again?

Unusual for a midnight-movie favourite, The Room does not consist of Equinox-esque monsters, surreal imagery, crazy clowns or singing transvestites. Rather, it is shaped in the style of a conventional drama. However, the difference in this and every other drama is the awful director behind the scenes. Conversations stop and start at random, major plot points are introduced and then scrapped throughout the film and the acting is just unimaginably bad. 

The Room works more like comedy than drama, though the audience is not laughing with the film, instead they are laughing at it. The humorous quality of the picture is clearly not intentional. Wiseau himself suggests that his film should not be seen as a humiliating sideshow attraction, but rather as a complex work of art. One wonders if Wiseau is an idiot or a comic genius. 

In Conclusion, personally I think The Room is a complete waste of time to see, but it indeed does its job as being so bad that it's slightly funny. If you are a fan of watching completely stupid movies, then this is the film for you. (No rating for this film)

No comments:

Post a Comment