The Room- review

When I was home this summer I kept hearing about this movie The Room by Tommy Wiseau. It has been dubbed the ‘worst movie of all-time,’ and has grown a massive cult following since its 2004 release a la The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It plays once a month in LA, and people will wait in lines for hours to laugh at and recite all the lines of this ‘anti-masterpiece.’
So this weekend, I decided I had to see what all the fuss was about and got a hold of a copy for myself. Its written, directed, produced and starred in by Tommy Wiseau on a hefty 6 million dollar budget. Plenty of money to crank out a solid indie film in this age of digital cinematography, however the result is the ‘Citizen Kane of bad movies.’

The plot, if thats what you can even call it, is basically a love triangle involving best friends and a conniving girlfriend. It’s quite basic, following the plot isn’t difficult, however characters seemingly come in and out of story for no apparent reason, scenes are added to the film as if at random, love scenes seem to involve pelvic thrusting into ribcages, and then of course there is the acting. Incomprehensibly bad to put it mildly, we are left to wonder where they even found these people, not that the script does them any justice, such classic lines include ‘I’m tired, I’m wasted, I love you darling’. Wiseau himself plays the lead character Johnny-

It’s like watching Dolph Lundgren play a Romanian gypsy with down syndrome, absolutely brilliant stuff. The sheer arrogance for Wiseau to believe that we would buy into this nonsensical, indulgent farce is what leaves us with our mouth open for the 90 minute film, that is if we aren’t already laughing hysterically at the outcome.

However, its Wiseau who is ultimately laughing, with DVD sales skyrocketing, midnight showings for the last few years in LA, and screenings just landed in New York and London with no end in sight, he is laughing all the way to the bank. Which leaves us with a very valuable lesson to be learned from The Room, if you can’t be the best at something, then strive to be the absolute worst.