DVD Review: The Room (2003)

The boyfriend and I are both on our Day 6 of the lemonade diet and I have to say it's probably one of the hardest things that I've ever done since I do love eating. To distract ourselves from this diet the boyfriend, who has a weird sense of humor, brought over a cinematic anomaly called The Room and forced me to watch it. Good thing that I was forewarned about it being one of the best worst movies ever and I do think that it deserved such a title. The last horrible movie I've seen was probably Megashark vs. Giant Octopus by Asylum Films, bad acting, bad CGI, bad production value but at least there's a plotline, this movie called The Room takes bad movies to a whole new level.

How can I even tell you what The Room is about? On the surface, it is about a manipulative woman who is cheating on her fiancee with his best friend. In reality, it's about a man with limited talents who thought it's a good idea to make a movie and get famous from it. I think the man is indeed achieving his goals in the William Hung sort of way. Director, producer, writer, leading actor and film distributor Tommy Wiseau plays Johnny, a successful banker who's madly in love with his fiancee the "beautiful" Lisa (because everyone keeps on saying how beautiful she is), but after 5 or 7 years of courting (depending on which point of the film you're watching) Lisa is tired of Johnny and fell for his best friend Mark in a stalker-ish way. Throw in a teenage delinquent, Lisa's mom who definitely has breast cancer and another couple who likes to have sex wherever, this film is definitely a whole new cinematic experience. Oh and all the characters in the movie live in the same building apparently and constantly pop in and out of the screen for no reason.

In the first scene, Teenage delinquent Denny knock on the door of Johnny and Lisa's apartment and just hang there for no reason. Denny says he likes to watch the couple and after the couple sort of imply that they will be having sex, Denny proceed to follow the couple upstairs to their bedroom and watch when the couple is having a pillow fight then left. Another scene where Lisa's mother (who sounds like she's doing a commercial for Life Alert or some old folks insurance) just dropped by to have a short pointless conversation with her daughter then left, the whole scene that can easily be done via phone.

The editing sucks, there were four softcore love scenes within the first 30 minutes and that was the best part. The whole film feels and look like what it would be if a low budget porn director decided he wants to make a full-length movie with less attractive actors but with the same acting skills and dialogues. Tommy Wiseau other than being not that attractive has a surprisingly muscular body. In every other line, Mr. Wiseau do a fake chuckle (ah-ha-ha) and repeated throughout the whole movie even when his girlfriend was leaving him. When he's not chuckling, It's a greeting to a person who just happens to come into the space he's in and then followed by a chuckle. There's no rhyme or reason for his emotions which is mostly blank but then the change to melodrama is sudden and awkward.



This is how one of the better done scenes looks like:



The most convincing acting in the movie was done by an extra who repeated "Where's my money, Denny?" for around 10 times. But I guess one have to marvel on how horrible the movie really is and laugh at the disaster, after all despite its horrible writing there are some classic lines in the movie that really shines:


"I definitely have breast cancer."


All the sudden talking to himself for no reason: "I did not hit her, I did not... Oh hi Mark!"


"You're tearing me apart, Lisa!"

The whole movie is studded with little gems like that, When the hostess ask everyone to go to the yard, people cheered "Yeah!" and went out, same thing when they were asked to come back in. Screenwriters can take heed from this movie and do everything in the opposite way. It's 99 minutes of my life that I'll never get back, good thing I needed to kill time. For the movie, F. For the unintentional comic value, C-. So it averages to about a D-.