The Room

My Grade:  ???

It is a special thing when you find a movie that is so bad it’s good. When everything comes together in such a spectacularly awful way that you can’t help but enjoy the horrific mess you are watching. I can find this kind of joy in a number of movies including Drumline, Troll 2, and more. But, in the annals of amazingly bad movies, none is better at being bad than Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 opus that takes itself very seriously, The Room. 

To watch this film is a unique experience. It’s not a unique story and doesn’t do anything unique with its cinematography or anything. It’s a straight forward story of a woman getting bored with her fiancee and seducing another man... her fiancee's best friend. The dialogue isn’t unique except for everyone greeting everyone else with “Oh, hi (insert character’s name)” as if Wiseau thinks we will forget the characters names if they aren’t said 100 times. No one thing is unique about this film; but the way everything comes together makes it unlike anything you have seen or will see. And it all hinges on the oddity that is Tommy Wiseau.

Wiseau writes, directs, produces, and stars in The Room. And he is just plain weird. His accent sounds European... maybe... or just like he’s constantly zonked out on pain meds... or something. And he might be the strangest looking person in the world. With his stringy black hair and indescribable facial expressions, he just makes you think he might be an alien. His wardrobe choices don’t help either. His clothes in the film never fit correctly and I counted at least two times when his character wears zip-off cargo pants. You know the ones that zip off at the knees in case you want to make them into shorts? It’s not a good look.

The acting is a whole other animal. It’s indescribably bad so I’m not even going to try. Nobody is believable in their roles but this could stem from the fact that the characters are horribly crafted. No character has any motivation for their actions. Johnny (Wiseau) doesn’t care about anything (even his fiancee cheating on him, it seems). Lisa (Johnny’s cheating fiancee) wavers in her feelings toward Johnny, never gives a reason for getting bored with him, and falls in love with Johnny’s best friend at the drop of a hat. She’s certifiably crazy. Then there’s Mark (Johnny’s best friend) who constantly tells Lisa they have to stop, then jumps right back into bed with her two seconds later. The film tries to portray this inner conflict he has about what he’s doing, but then (ten minutes later) he doesn’t even care if Johnny finds out. All the other characters just drift in and out of the story for no apparent reason other than to have conversations that spell out facts about the plot. It’s a conundrum as to how these characters can be so poorly crafted.

The dialogue is even worse than the characters who speak it. People literally ramble on and on about stuff but essentially say the exact same thing in slightly different ways as they ramble. For instance, when Johnny is telling Lisa how he didn’t get his promotion, he says:

“That son of a b**** told me that I would get it within three months. I save them bundles. They’re crazy. I don’t think I will ever get it. They betrayed me, they didn’t keep their promise, they tricked me, and I don’t care anymore.”

Then there are times when people say things and it’s as if they didn’t say it at all or the writer forgot that they had the character say it. Here’s an example when Lisa is talking to Mark about her mother:

“She wants to control my life. I’m not going to put up with that. I’m going to do what I want to do and that’s it. What do you think I should do?”

She is going to do what she wants to do... then asks Mark what he thinks she should do. Wow. And, when Lisa asks Johnny if he got his promotion, he says “no.” Then, after a pause, she says “you didn’t get it, did you?”

Then there’s the dialogue that tells us exactly what we already know from the rest of the conversation. Lisa is talking to her sister about how she’s cheating on Johnny. Her sister mentions how she could never do that. Then Lisa explains her point of view and her sister replies, “your point of view is so different from mine.” Yea, we got that from the rest of the conversation.

The best part of the dialogue, though is how repetitive it is in order to hammer home the plot points we really need to be aware of. There are countless times when Johnny or someone else mentions that Mark is his “best friend.” And Lisa says “I don’t love him anymore” probably fifteen times.

There are so many other things I could mention that add to the strange masterpiece that is The Room. Like how people inexplicably come in and out of Johnny’s house for seemingly no other reason than to have a brief conversation then say they “have to go.” Or how Lisa’s mother says, “I got the results; I definitely have breast cancer” then her health issues are never brought up again. But it’s just something you have to see to believe. 

Once you see The Room, you’ll understand why it has stood the test of time (since 2003) as the “best worst movie ever.” Which is why I didn’t grade it. I can’t give it a good rating because it is a horrible film. But, I can’t give it a bad rating because I enjoy it so much. Once you see it, though, you won’t understand how Tommy Wiseau spent 6 million dollars to make it. Yes, you read that correctly... 6 million dollars is the reported budget. Shocking, I know.

For some more fun with The Room check out some of these links...

Trivia about The Room

Some goofs from The Room

A fun little video game tribute to The Room

Everything you want to know about The Room from Wikipedia