Review: The Room (2003)

For those not in the know, "The Room" deserves a little back story: In 2001, Tommy Wiseau wrote a play called "The Room", and eventually decided to make it into a movie to showcase his powerful acting abilities. Not finding any takers in Hollywood, he somehow managed to raise $6 million dollars, rented a studio, bought some new cameras, and decided to make the movie on his own. He (along with fellow casting director, and co-star, Greg Sestero) reportedly went through "thousands of headshots" to pick out the remaining castmembers; once rounded out, filming began.

Principal photography reportedly lasted eight months, but did not go without problems: Jon Vogt, who played Peter the psychiatrist, quit midway through the production. In true Ed Wood-style, Peter is replaced with an unnamed character, who appears out of nowhere toward the end of the film and is never introduced. Wiseau also reportedly had multiple problems with the camera crew, replacing the entire team twice. The script, which was apparently long and even more rambling than what appears on film, was heavily edited by the script supervisor and the actors on set. The end result, needless to say, is unbelievably atrocious, but somehow falls far short of being as entertaining as it could have been.

Wiseau, ye of long black hair that went out of style years ago, plays Johnny, a successful banker who is next in line to receive a promotion. He is married to Lisa (Juliette Danielle), a woman who does nothing with her time but complain about how horrible of a man Johnny is, despite the fact he is always buying her something.

As the film opens, in fact, Johnny presents Lisa with a red dress, and the pair, much to the shock and horror of the viewer, decide to have an extended lovemaking sequence. It is the first of roughly five, all of which are set to slow R&B ballads, and all of which are embarrassingly unsexy; three of which occur within the first thirty minutes. These scenes come off as little more than poorly choreographed softcore porn, as acted out by complete virgins. Hands hesitate, as if not knowing where to go; bodies lay on bodies in awkward, unconvincing positions; and perhaps worst of all, the moans and grunts all seem to be a part of the music track, rather than coming directly from the actors' mouths.

Shortly after Lisa and Johnny complete their vomit-inducing sex session, Lisa is complaining to her mom about how horrible Johnny is, and how she no longer wants to marry him. Her mother urges her to go through with it anyway, simply because Johnny has so much money. They discuss it for a bit, before Lisa's mom drops a bomb: Her lab tests have come back, and she has tested positive for breast cancer. Well, at least we should think such a line should have some dramatic impact; Lisa simply tells her that she'll be all right, and the cancer is never mentioned again.

Come to think of it, many things are never mentioned again, or never explained fully. Take the character of Denny, for example. We are told that he was once a homeless kid stuck on the streets, before Johnny took him under his wing, becoming his father figure. He even goes so far as to allow Denny to move in to the same apartment Johnny and Lisa occupy, fully paying for his rent. Yet Denny is obviously not entirely right, from the way he constantly barges into their house without knocking (though Johnny and Lisa must share some of the blame by never locking the door), and the way he awkwardly handles his own feelings (at one point professing his love for Lisa, directly to Johnny, whose nonchalant response to the whole situation is equally disturbing). Yet his disabilities, or his lack of understanding in obvious social norms, are never fully explained, and since we cannot identify with his problems, then we cannot sympathize with him. Thus, his actions are cringe-inducing when, I am guessing anyway, they are meant to be pitied.

There is also a sequence in the middle of the film when Denny is nearly killed by a local drug dealer named Chris-R, who claims that Denny owes him some money. Chris-R is about to shoot Johnny in the head, when he is rescued at the last moment by Johnny and Mark (more on him in a minute), who haul the criminal off, announcing they are going to take him to the police station. However, outside of an embarrassingly long argument in which Lisa and her mother grill Denny about where he got the drugs and why (something that Denny never fully answers), the criminal and the drug situation are entirely forgotten.

Anyway, to sum up the rest of this bullshit, which has already taken way too much of my time: Lisa falls instead for Mark, Johnny's best friend, and proceeds to seduce him in the most laughably inane seduction sequence in movie history. The rest of the movie shows (or at least, attempts to) the effects it has on the relationships of all the people involved in this distorted love triangle, coming to a finale that is shocking and jaw-dropping for entirely the wrong reasons.

Yet "The Room", which was distributed and marketed solely by Wiseau's creatively-named film company Wiseau Films, has been a huge underground success in Los Angeles, the only city where it has played with any kind of regularity, since its debut in 2003. The film has a cultlike appeal, similar to "The Rocky Horror Picture Show": People come dressed as characters from the movie, throw plastic spoons every time the inexplicably framed photos of spoons (which are part of Johnny and Lisa's living room decor) appear on screen, and shout insults and lines at the characters. Wiseau himself attends many of these events, and assures the audience that it doesn't hurt him when they make fun of his movie: He's simply glad that it has gotten any kind of attention at all. Hell, it even has celebrity fans, David Cross and Kristen Bell among them, many of whom who were first introduced to the movie thanks to a billboard that sat in Los Angeles for over five years. The billboard features the movie's inexplicable main image: Of Wiseau staring at the camera, one eye lowered, as if preparing for the staring match of his life. It neither makes sense in billboard form, nor in movie form, as such a sequence doesn't even exist in the movie.

But despite all of its obvious shortcomings, "The Room" is nowhere near as much fun as it should be, mainly because it comes nowhere close to living up to its "worst film of all time" hype. Don't get me wrong, it's an absolutely horrible film. But as long as movies have been released direct-to-video, there is at least one film every bit as laughably horrible as "The Room" released just about every week. In fact, "The Room" actually has a couple plusses that prevent it from being entirely awful: The movie was competently shot (by cinematographer Todd Barron), and there's a performance that is actually surprisingly decent (Robyn Paris is pretty good as Michelle, Lisa's friend, though that just may be the low standards set by just about everyone else).

Just as negative aspects can ruin a truly great film, "The Room" manages to incorporate just a couple too many moments of skill to ruin what could have been a truly horrible, and an unintentionally genius, motion picture.

Rating: * (out of 4)