I would like to submit the following
review for your website. This film is a work of genius! Bravo!
Love,
Jimmy
THIS FILM IS LIKE SITTING ON AN ATOM BOMB THAT IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE
I have now seen Mr. Tommy Wiseau’s cinematic tour-de-force, "The
Room" three times.
With each viewing, "The Room" becomes more complexly entangled
in and inseparable
from my own life. I no longer know where The Room ends and I begin.
It is, without question, the worst film ever made. Including movies
made on beta max
video cameras in special education high school classes. But, this comment
is in no
way meant to be discouraging. Because while The Room is the worst movie
ever made it
is also the greatest way to spend a blisteringly fast 100 minutes in
the dark.
Simply put, "The Room" will change your life.
It’s not just the dreadful acting or the sub-normal screenplay
or the bewildering
direction or the musical score so soaked in melodrama that you will
throw up on
yourself or the lunatic-making cinematography; no, there is something
magically
wrong with this movie that can only be the product of divine intervention.
The centerpiece of this filmic atomic blast is Mr. Tommy Wiseau himself.
Without
him, it would still be the worst movie ever made, but with him it is
the greatest
worst movie ever made. Tommy has been described as a Cajun, a Croatian
cyborg,
possibly from Belgium, clearly a product of Denmark, or quite possible
not from this
world or dimension. All of these things are true at any one moment.
He is a
tantalizing mystery stuffed inside an enigma wrapped in bacon and smothered
in
cheese. You will fall in love with this man even as you are repelled
by him from the
first moment he steps onto screen with his long Louis the Fourteenth
style black
locks and thick triangular shoulders in an oddly fitting suit. Tommy
looks out of
place, out of time and out of this world. He is perfectly imperfect.
The Room begins with "Johnny" (Tommy Wiseau) and his incomprehensibly
evil fiancée
"Lisa" (played by a woman with incongruously colored eyebrows
and a propensity for
removing her shirt) engaging in some light frottage on the gayest bed
this side of
the end of one of the final scenes from the third installment of Lord
of the Rings,
joined by, Denny; (played with a deft sense of the absurd by Phillip
Haldiman) their
sexually confused teenage neighbor who is clearly suffering from a form
of aged
decrepitude. When Denny, who looks like the human version of Gleek the
monkey from
Superfriends, says, in a slightly creepy yet playful tone of voice,
"I like to
watch!" as Johnny and Lisa roll around the bed in a pre-intercourse
ritual revolving
around rose petals, you know you are in for a very special movie.
After a lengthy lovemaking scene (not to worry if you miss it the first
time, they
show it again in its entirety later in the movie) in which Tommy’s
bizarre scaly
torso and over-anatomized rear-end are lovingly depicted over and over
again as he
appears to thrust his manhood into Lisa’s hip.
Just when you think the movie might lapse into an ordinary, pedestrian
sort of
badness, Johnny’s best friend Mark, a man who’s job seems
to be to wear the beard
that James Brolin had before he shaved it off, shows up and electrifies
the screen
with a performance so wooden that it belongs in the lumber section of
Home Depot.
Incidentally, Mark is played by Greg Sestero, who, in addition to being
described as
a department store mannequin, was also the line producer on "The
Room" and one of
Tommy Wiseau’s five (5!!!!!) assistants on the movie. That’s
a lot of hats for one
man to wear. Lisa forces Mark, amid his paltry, unconvincing protests
to have an
affair with her on Johnny’s uncomfortable circular stairs. For
no apparent reason
Lisa decides that she is pure evil and wants to torture her angelic
albeit insane fiancé, Johnny.
Lisa receives pointed advice from her mother who casually announces
that she is
dying of breast cancer and then promptly forgets that she is dying of
breast cancer
immediately thereafter. But Lisa is determined to make Johnny’s
life a living hell.
But not before they recycle the sex scene from earlier in the movie.
Denny gets into
trouble with a drug dealer. Mark shaves his beard. Tommy gets drunk
on an unusual
cocktail made from mixing whiskey and vodka. Lisa lies and tells everyone
that Tommy
hit her in a drunken rage.
A balding psychologist appears out of nowhere, offers some advice, then
apparently
dies while softly falling on the ground in an attempt to catch a football
thrown by Mark.
All of these seemingly disparate events build up to two cathartic moments.
The first
is when Tommy expressively yells at Lisa with the line "You are
tearing me apart
Lisa!". You will cheer at this line as you realize that the film
has been tearing
you apart the whole time. And the second is at Tommy’s birthday
party where the
worst actor that has ever been born plays a unidentified man wearing
a silk shirt
who utters a phrase that perfectly describes the experience of watching
The Room,
"It feels like I’m sitting on atom bomb that is going to
explode!"
See this film at all costs. See it twice. Or three times. See it until
you can
recite every precious line of dialogue this movie has to offer. Let
The Room become
your new religion and Tommy Wiseau your prophet preaching the gospel
according to Johnny.
The Room will change you forever.