ROOM, THE
(director/writer: Tommy Wiseau; cinematographer: Todd Barron; editor: Eric Yalkut Chase; music: Mladen Milicevic; cast: Juliette Danielle(Lisa), Greg Sestero (Mark), Tommy Wiseau (Johnny), Philip Haldiman (Denny), Carolyn Minnott(Claudette, Lisa’s Mother), Robyn Paris(Michelle), Mike Holmes (Mike), Kyle Vogt (Peter); Runtime: 99; MPAA Rating: R; producer: Tommy Wiseau; Wiseau-Films; 2003)
“If you like bad films performed by those without talent, films like Ed Wood Jr. cranked out, then this one will do the trick.“
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Hapless writer, director, producer and star Tommy Wiseau (“Homeless in America“) is an immigrant with an unrecognizable foreign accent (Eastern European?) from some unknown place (maybe Mars!) who lays this dreck vanity project indie (financed with Wiseau’s $7million from selling Korean leather jackets) on us and would you believe it there’s a cult following for it (only in America!) as it gets some play as a Midnite movie with an interactive loyal fanbase, like for the Rocky Horror Picture Show.The Room once falsely billed itself as a Tennessee Williams type of drama but now is less delusional and bills itself as a comedy, but its witless comedy is of the unintentional kind. If you like bad films performed by those without talent, films like Ed Wood Jr. cranked out, then this one will do the trick. Except I found the Wood films more or less amusing and this one a bore, showing one can have discretion even when it comes to bad films.
San Francisco banker Johnny (Tommy Wiseau) is a well-meaning generous sap who is set to marry his manipulative bitchy girlfriend Lisa (Juliette Danielle), someone he knows for the last seven years. Johnny bought her a car and the apartment where she lives, but Lisa tells her heartless mom (Carolyn Minnott), who believes in marriages of convenience and that there’s no such thing as love, that she no longer loves her Johnny and finds him a bore. Lisa also mentions she had sex with Johnny’s best friend Mark (Greg Sestero), and loves him. Mom’s advice is to marry Johnny because he’s a good provider and a good catch, that it doesn’t matter that she can’t stomach him anymore because she got him eating out of her hand and can get from him anything she craves. How Lisa gets out of the doomed marriage, set in a month’s time, leads to tragedy.
The pathetic film is laced with strained dialogue, stilted acting, an unbearably horrid love triangle story, a nauseous-inducing syrupy jazz score and a lack of any directorial direction. Those who fell in love with it, loved it for all its missteps and got a hoot laughing at it and poking fun at all the wooden characters. If you were like me and found it not funny, The Room will only remind you that it brings shallow filmmaking to a new low.
REVIEWED ON 8/30/2010 GRADE: C-