Review of The Room (2003) by Mrmoviebuff — 25 Feb 2016

When it comes to filmmaking, there are specific rules...it's not just about picking up a camera, hiring some people off the street to be your actors, and then writing whatever story you want to tell...

...This is where Tommy Wiseau's cult masterpiece 'The Room' comes in, a movie that essentially doesn't know how to be a movie. It is written, produced, directed by and starring Tommy Wiseau as a banker named Johnny.

Johnny lives a sort-of happy life in San Francisco, he is engaged to his "future wife" named Lisa (Juliette Danielle), I use the term "future wife" because that's what this movie is saying. The first problem with their chemistry is pretty much everything, they do not look like a couple...if you saw the two of them walking down the street, the last thing you would ever think is them being madly in love. Wiseau looks way too old for her.

The first half-an-hour of this movie is four different sex scenes...these scenes drive the movie nowhere, they just put the movie to a dead standstill. The sex scenes are not at all steamy in the slightest...they are actually quite hard to watch.

Later we discover that Lisa is having some extra on the side, she calls Johnny's best friend Mark (Greg Sestero), and it turns out that she seduces him and they have sex...on the swirly staircase...that is a very interesting location since the bedrooms are only a few steps up the stairs, and that the front door is beside the staircase, so it's a surprise that none of them get caught. That was close.

There are so many subplots added to the movie that also lead it nowhere, we hear about Lisa's mother Claudette (Carolyn Minnott) having breast cancer, we never hear about this later on in the movie...we even see Claudette in later scenes of the movie and her health doesn't seem to have deteriorated. There is one pointless scene where we see the young character named Denny (Philip Haldiman) getting into some trouble with a big thug named Chris R (Dan Janjigian)...this scene is over before it even begins. And, of course, who can forget the football scenes...

...this is really where the film (can I even say it's a "film"?) starts to get dragged down by pointless padding. There is this one scene where we see the main characters; Johnny, Mark, Denny and a psychologist named Peter (Kyle Vogt) dressed up in tuxedos, so you think it's finally the wedding day of Johnny and Lisa. Nope! Wrong, they end up going outside, and toss around the football about three times (yes, I counted), and then Peter trips and falls over, and they decide to go back inside the house. What was the point of this scene? If you took this scene out, it would not affect the movie, but then again, it wouldn't improve much either.

Later on in the movie, Johnny decides to record phone calls as he begins to grow suspicious that Lisa is hiding something. This is sort-of important later.

We cut to Johnny's birthday party and all of his friends are there...apart from Peter, if you've read Greg Sestero's book "The Disaster Artist", you'll know why. Mark and Lisa decide to feel each other up again... during the party!!! And surprise! They're caught, by a random character who we do not know, nor does the screenplay allow us to get into detail about him, he's just some guy that finds out about Mark and Lisa's affair behind Johnny's back.

Johnny does find out about this affair, and is very angry about it. The thing is; Wiseau tries to position his audience to make us care and feel sorry for him...I don't care...nor do I feel sorry for him. His acting is so over-the-top sometimes, and laughable, you are fully aware that you are watching the film.

But the worst performance by far is from actress Robyn Paris, who plays Lisa's best friend, Michelle. I know a lot of people say Wiseau's acting is bad, but her acting makes Tommy Wiseau look like Daniel Day-Lewis. Seriously, she is bad.

The dialogue here is atrocious, too. "I did not hit her, it's not true, it's bulls**t, I did not hit her, I did NOT" *throws bottle in anger and notices Mark* "Oh hi, Mark". Or try..."No, I cannot talk about that now, anyway, how's your sex life?" Who asks like that?! Better yet, there's that famous "You're tearing me apart, Lisa".

'The Room' is the worst film ever made, period. It drags, there is a lot of padding, there are stories and characters that are introduced, but then are removed abruptly...and the story is generic and uninspired. God knows what was going through Tommy Wiseau's head when he was making this. Although, it is enjoyable, I am rating this a rare 0/10 simply because it is a film that is bad in every level...but on an entertaining level, it does get a 10/10...for all the wrong reasons.

You're tearing me apart, Tommy Wiseau.