Review: The Room

And we're back. The Cap'n is once again in the AOS where things are surprisingly chilly. Since I'll take cold over hot just about any day of the week, that's fine with me.

While I was gone the *ahem* opportunity to see The Room happened and I'm not going to sugarcoat it: that movie sucks.

Sorry to Tommy Wiseau and the dozens of other poor saps he corralled into making his epic tale of romance and betrayal, but it was all for naught. I worried (and Cranpire hoped) it was truly the stuff of legend; after all, it apparently makes the rounds at parties hosted by the likes of Paul Rudd and David Cross. I'm sad to report that while the movie is bad to degrees few can reach, it isn't quite up to snuff.

The key for a bad movie to move from "laughable" to "classic" is watchability. Not merely "I can watch this" but "It's so bad that I can't turn away." Plan 9 from Outer Space does this. The Rocky Horror Picture Show does this. People I don't know (but who work at Disc-Go-Round) claim Troll 2 does this*. There are movies out there which are horrendous yet hilarious and somehow also never get boring.

Unfortunately, The Room gets boring pretty quickly. When Tommy Wiseau is onscreen, delivering the worst line readings from the worst acting exercise you've ever seen with comparably inept actors, the movie is frequently "laugh out loud" funny. There are moments within the film (many involving footballs or questions that just don't make sense) which attain "Bad Movie" nirvana. But then there are other, longer, stretches of the film where two people are talking and having boring conversations about things no one cares about. That's the crusty part which frequently squeezes out the comic filling. That's a shame, because I hate to turn you away from a movie where someone innocuously says "Underwear? What's that?"

Before long, Cranpire was skipping ahead, looking for the scene where Wiseau makes James Dean look like a good actor by woefully warbling "You're Tearing Me Apart!" (seen in the trailer from yesterday). The chapters are so poorly constructed that it's easy to miss, unless you go to scene selections. It's one of the only chapters that doesn't simply describe where they characters are or what they're talking about. Fortunately, that chapter is entitled "You Are Tearing Me A Part"**.

For many of you, a selection of scenes from YouTube will suffice, and I suspect they'll capture the best moments of this trainwreck. We didn't watch the whole movie (although Adam wanted to), so I can't expect you to. What you can find online is the funnier parts, and they're that way not by design. If Wiseau set out to make The Room a comedy, I'd be very surprised.

While it's certainly watchable in pieces, I'd be lying if I said The Room had a place in Bad Movie Night. I'm afraid it's more of a pretender than the real deal. Such a shame.




* That was all the independent third-party recommendation we needed. He mentioned it without provocation, which tells me we're in for a treat on Saturday.
** Seriously.