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The Room (Film)

by Andrew Moraitis | February 03, 2010 09:52 | Edited February 03, 2010 09:53

Despite the complete lack of talent of the principals, this cult oddity tries so hard for greatness that it almost gets there.

Dubbed "the Citizen Kane of bad movies," writer-director-star Tommy Wiseau's The Room opens as an incompetently-made drama, but quickly emerges as something else entirely: a great bad film. The Room is so obsessively, fanatically, zealously yearning for greatness that its complete ineptitude - including its technical errors, film school-quality lighting and soap-opera level performances - mean that it is infinitely more memorable than the simple mediocrity of many Hollywood productions.

 

Wiseau deserves the credit, at least; he tried to make something of note and consequence as a filmmaker (the trailer screams The Room has "the passion of Tennessee Williams"), even if he and his collaborators lacked the talent, skill and general technical expertise to film this laughably clichéd story about a nice-guy banker (Wiseau), his fiancée (Juliette Danielle) and his best friend (Greg Sestero).

 

Perhaps with the right screenplay and honed by a great filmmaker, Wiseau could make a decent background "heavy" (he certainly projects a simmering menace reminiscent of edgy American actors Vincent Gallo and Michael Wincott). But his intense presence is completely at odds with his supposedly sweet character. All the other actors give simply empty (although enjoyably amateurish) performances, but Wiseau injects his role with strange affectations and genuinely oddball line-readings which betray a discomfort with the English language: "It is not TRUE. I did not HIT her," he screams in one of the film's many unintended laughs.

 

As a writer, Wiseau pushes his terrible ideas to the limit of taste. He fills his underdeveloped screenplay with a number of weirdly explicit (and deeply unsexy) love scenes that highlight the lack of chemistry between the performers and he often abandons the story to indulge his various "philosophies" about life. It is almost as if Wiseau intended to disregard all of the screenwriting clichés sprouted by film schools and screenwriting gurus, but-in doing so he also abandons the simple storytelling values of any good drama i.e. engaging characters, a clear story and well-honed themes.

 

He also directs with little understanding of the visual possibilities of the film medium, repeatedly showing shots of the San Francisco skyline, shooting every scene in the same static, sitcom-style and afflicting most sequences with obvious technical errors (including out-of-sync eye-lines).  

 

But despite its many, many faults as a creative and technical exercise The Room is not a punishingly bad film. In America, the film has become a cult phenomenon, not unlike Rocky Horror, with screenings of the film eliciting jeers, laughs and a genuinely clever running commentary by fans (or "roomies" as they prefer to be called).

 

Unlike the mediocrity of Frank Miller's endless The Spirit or Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo, The Room proves watchable and, on a certain (albeit unintended) level, Wiseau's endeavour provides more flat-out entertainment than a middling film ever could.