The Room Review
The Room is a movie with no plot, no characters, and virtually no sanity. It is borderline genius for a film so terrible. Follow us through the perils of the life and times of a successful banker and his beautiful, but manipulative, temptress of a fiancé who continues to deceive him in the comfort of his own home. There are no spoilers for this movie because it is already spoiled.
First, Tommy Wiseau. That is a sentence all on its own. Tommy Wiseau wrote, directed, produced, and starred in this flop of a movie. It was six million dollars right down the drain and nothing about this movie is even remotely good. Not the plot (what plot?) not the music (utter cringe), not the actors (if they can be called that) and not the directing (have you seen the director?). Nothing at all. But somehow, once you start watching it, you can’t tear your eyes away. We should know, we tried. It’s a matter of the movie being so badly done and so terribly edited that you can’t possibly look away from it.
That being said, Tommy Wiseau plays the lead role Johnny. Tommy? Johnny? He should have just stuck to his name. Maybe he would have been more receptive in all his scenes. Then there’s Lisa (Juliette Danielle) and Mark (Greg Sestero). Those two need to get a room not the room. Sequel? There are many other characters that like to barge into his home and a creepy kid named Denny. Stay away from Denny.
The dialogue of this movie is dreadful. Really. Not only can you not understand a word Tommy Wiseau says, but he also repeats himself numerous times and laughs at the most inopportune moments. However, sometimes the dialogue echoes exactly what the watcher is feeling such as Johnny’s exasperated, “You are tearing me apart, Lisa!” This movie is not just ‘bad’ to watch, it is also very uncomfortable to sit through, starting with the copy and pasted sex scene between Johnny and Lisa. Their budget went to football pandering.
Speaking of copy and paste and football, if you enjoy copious amounts of tossing football with the bros without any of the running but still all the sweating, this movie is perfect. Now, there is an attempt at an emerging plot, but there are just too many subplots that never get resolved. You might have missed it the first time watching because it was only mentioned once, but Lisa’s mom has breast cancer?
The movie’s pacing is another disaster on its own. You never know what is going to happen next. Will Lisa’s mom be in the house? Two strangers having the time of their life on Johnny’s couch? Drug dealers and five minutes of screaming and crying “Why? Denny?” This element of surprise is fool’s gold.
Is this a bad movie? Yes. There are literally no words to express the unpleasant atrocity of this movie. But is it worth watching? Hell yes. Just to see for yourself the monstrosity of a film so bad it puts the ‘ass’ in assassinate. Twice. It is that bad. But watch it for yourself.
