The Room (2003) Reviews

• It's like sitting on an atom bomb that's about to explode

  brickyardjimmy2004-01-12

  I have now seen Mr. Tommy Wiseau's cinematic tour-de-force, 'The Room' three times. With each viewing, 'The Room' becomes more complexly entangled in and inseparable from my own life. I no longer know where The Room ends and I begin. It is, without question, the worst film ever made. But this comment is in no way meant to be discouraging. Because while The Room is the worst movie ever made it is also the greatest way to spend a blisteringly fast 100 minutes in the dark. Simply put, 'The Room' will change your life. It's not just the dreadful acting or the sub-normal screenplay or the bewildering direction or the musical score so soaked in melodrama that you will throw up on yourself or the lunatic-making cinematography; no, there is something so magically wrong with this movie that it can only be the product of divine intervention. If you took the greatest filmmakers in history and gave them all the task of purposefully creating a film as spectacularly horrible as this not one of them, with all their knowledge and skill, could make anything that could even be considered as a contender. Not one line or scene would rival any moment in The Room. The centerpiece of this filmic holocaust is Mr. Tommy Wiseau himself. Without him, it would still be the worst movie ever made, but with him it is the greatest worst movie ever made. Tommy has been described as a Cajun, a Croatian cyborg, possibly from Belgium, clearly a product of Denmark, or maybe even not from this world or dimension. All of these things are true at any one moment. He is a tantalizing mystery stuffed inside an enigma wrapped in bacon and smothered in cheese. You will fall in love with this man even as you are repelled by him from the first moment he steps onto screen with his long Louis the Fourteenth style black locks and thick triangular shoulders packed into an oddly fitting suit, and his metallic steroid destroyed skin. Tommy looks out of place, out of time and out of this world. There has never been anything else like him. Nor will there ever be. The Room begins with 'Johnny' (Tommy Wiseau) and his incomprehensibly evil fiancée 'Lisa' (played by a woman with incongruously colored eyebrows and a propensity for removing her shirt) engaging in some light frottage, joined by, Denny, (played with a deft sense of the absurd by Phillip Haldiman), their sexually confused teenage neighbor who is clearly suffering from a form of aged decrepitude. When Denny, who looks like the human version of Gleek the monkey from Superfriends, says, in a slightly creepy yet playful tone of voice, 'I like to watch!' as Johnny and Lisa roll around the bed in a pre-intercourse ritual revolving around rose petals, you know you are in for a very special movie. After a lengthy lovemaking scene (not to worry if you miss it the first time, they show it again in its entirety later in the movie) in which Tommy's bizarre scaly torso and over-anatomized rear-end are lovingly depicted over and over again as he appears to hump Lisa's hip, we discover that Lisa, for no particular reason, has become bored with Tommy's incessant lovemaking and decides to leave him. Just when you think the movie might lapse into an ordinary, pedestrian sort of badness, Johnny's best friend Mark, a man who's job seems to be to wear James Brolin's beard from Amityville Horror, shows up and electrifies the screen with a performance so wooden that it belongs in the lumber section of Home Depot. Incidentally, Mark is played by Greg Sestero, who, in addition to being described as a department store mannequin, was also the line producer on 'The Room' and one of Tommy Wiseau's five (5!!!!!) assistants on the movie. Lisa forces Mark, amid his paltry, unconvincing protests, to have an affair with her on their uncomfortable circular stairs. For no apparent reason Lisa decides that she is made of pure evil and wants to torture her angelic and insanely devoted fiancé, Johnny. Lisa receives pointed advice from her mother who casually announces that she is dying of breast cancer and then never mentions it again. But Lisa is determined to make Johnny's life a living hell, in spite of the fact that she, according to her mother, "cannot survive on her own in the cutthroat 'computer business'". But not before they recycle the sex scene from earlier in the movie where we get another bird's eye view of Johnny's ludicrous naked body. Denny gets into trouble with a drug dealer. Mark shaves his beard. Tommy gets drunk on an unusual cocktail made from mixing whiskey and vodka. Lisa lies and tells everyone that Tommy hit her in a drunken rage. A balding psychologist appears out of nowhere, offers some advice, then apparently dies while softly falling on the ground in an attempt to catch a football thrown by Mark. All of these seemingly disparate events build up to two cathartic moments. The first is when Tommy expressively yells at Lisa with the line 'You are tearing me apart Lisa!'. You will cheer at this line as you realize that the film has been tearing you apart the whole time. And the second is at Tommy's birthday party where the worst actor that has ever been born plays a unidentified man wearing a silk shirt who utters a phrase that perfectly describes the experience of watching The Room, 'It feels like I'm sitting on atom bomb that is going to explode!' The shocking ending will leave you pleading for some kind of sequel. See this film at all costs. See it twice. Or three times. Or as one kid that I met from Woodland Hills has, 12 times! See it until you can recite every precious line of dialogue this movie has to offer. Let The Room become your new religion and Tommy Wiseau your prophet preaching the gospel according to Johnny. My dream is to someday buy a theater and run The Room 24 hours a day, 7 days a week until the print disintegrates. I hope it becomes your dream as well.

• The Best Movie....EVER!!!

  houndog52004-02-29

  OK, that may be a stretch, but I have inside knowledge into the facts. You see, I was fortunate enough to have worked on the film. As I read the reviews here, especially the last one, which I am sure was written by our amazing Director/Actor/Producer/Writer, I felt I had to respond. Having the dubious honor of saying I worked on this film, has also brought with it the responsibility of telling the truth about what happened on set. Apparently Tommy had a lot of money sitting around and decided he needed to make a film. Not being able to decide what to shoot, film or video, we shot both. Side by side. Both cameras on the same head, being operated by one camera operator. We shot almost the whole thing in the parking lot and back storage shed (read- sound stage) of a camera rental house in Hollywood. I got the call to work on the show after they had already tried to start with another crew that ended up all being dismissed. I believe that we ended up being crew 2 of 4. The show never had much organization to it from the start. We were told it would be a 3 week shoot. At the end of 3 weeks we were exactly 1/2 way done. Crew calls were usually 8 a.m. tommy would show up around 10:30 or 11. Because he would take the HD video camera home with him every night, we had no choice but to wait for him. Since we were only in one room or outside the door in the parking lot, we did not have anything to do but sit around and wait every day. When Tommy arrived we would have to see if he was in actor mode or director mode. If he was in actor mode, you were not allowed to talk to him so he could "stay in character." Since he was in almost every scene, he was always in his "actor" mode. This also meant that he could not direct. Noting the huge delays every day and the fact that we were never seeming to get anything done, our wonderful script supervisor stepped up and became the director...at least he tried. One day he had to go off and do another show and asked if anyone else wanted to step up and direct and keep some script notes. When nobody volunteered, I stepped up. I loved it. It was my directorial genius that had tommy bump into Lisa as they were taking the bad guy off the roof! I will also take credit for the now famous line "You are tearing me apart, Lisa!" In the first 10 takes, tommy kept saying "You are TAKING me apart!" As the crew tried to keep it together, I felt I should right the situation and corrected the line. The crew was also instrumental in keeping the chicken line in. "CHEEEEEPPPPPPP, CHEEP, CHEEP, CHEEP, CHEEP!" We begged our scripty/director to keep him doing it take after take. Though the crew ultimately followed the original DP out the door and quit, we are all proud to have taken part in the making of this film. Amongst the film crew realms, we are minor celebrities. "Dude, you worked on that thing?" is a phrase that is often heard when The Room is mentioned. I have the pleasure of driving through Hollywood every day and still seei ng the billboard for the film up and Tommy glaring at me as if to say, "I telled you I could make movie." For those looking for a photo op, it's on Highland, a few blocks south of Sunset. I know that tommy took out an ad in the trade papers asking "For Your Consideration", I only wished that I could see him on stage accepting an Academy Award. It would be well earned. Rumor has it that he has a vampire film in the works... let's hope so... I only hope I get the opportunity to work on it. I can only hope that The Room becomes a cult classic with midnight showings. I'll put my tux on and bring a football. Perhaps I'll stand up for a Q&A afterward and tell the stories I have so fondly tried to burn from my memory. My other dream is for the DVD. There are 100's of hours of behind the scenes footage out there. The camera for the behind the scenes material was always recording. ALWAYS! It will be awesome to see what took place on our set. I hope he puts it out there. I know I would buy several copies for all my friends and family. Any questions?

• The "Plan 9 from Outer Space" of chamber dramas

  NeelyO2004-02-23

  Forget all the three-line raves this movie has received (which all seem to be suspiciously similar in tone). THE ROOM is one of those rare laugh-riots that is so fantastically inept as to border on genius. While most bad movies offer a handful of terrible scenes divided by stretches of just plain dull, writer-director-producer-star Tommy Wiseau's film offers one moment of disaster after another. Whether it's the made-up-by-fifth-graders dialogue, the deer-in-headlights performances, or the positively icky sex scenes (love those smushed rose petals on the chubby girl's back), you'll be howling from start to finish. This movie has already amassed a cult of people who know what to yell at the screen and when; for a movie that's being self-distributed, this rates as some kind of crap-movie miracle. Keep an eye out for the pointless insert shots of San Francisco, which give the idea of time passing even when it doesn't: one party scene, for example, features eight of these cut-aways. You really can't believe how terrible THE ROOM is, but at least it's entertaining, albeit in ways that the lazy-eyed, odd-bodied, English-mangling auteur never imagined. Not to be missed.

• inept

  samsavenger2010-07-16

  I've never in my life been more entertained by a film that has absolutely NO redeeming qualities. Unintentionally inept characters engage in progressively bizarre and unnatural interactions which seem to peak at erratic and unexpected intervals. The awkwardness of the actors is framed by strange pauses, jarring scripts and incredibly bizarre production techniques - there are ample 'deer in the headlights' moments, in which you can feel genuine sympathy for these people who are obviously so caught up in Tommy's strange and dominating creative control that they've failed to see any better. Other filmmakers play with similarly surreal concepts - David Lynch for example - but this film lacks anything resembling artistic refinement, insight or self awareness placing it far from comparison. It's kind of like watching a train crash in slow motion - random, incoherent, disastrous, accidental and ultimately painful. The sense of alienation emanating from this film places the audience extremely far from being able to relate to what's happening on screen, which leaves a lot of room for uncontrollable laughter given the right circumstances. The camera work and production techniques would not be out of place in many daytime soap operas, nor would the script and plot, but there is an undefinable quality which separates this movie from the sense mediocrity often found in such shows and instead casts it deep into the abyss of tragically bad film making where it will be forever trapped along with Wiseau's artistic integrity. This really is a new frontier. It is truly awful, but I cannot recommend it enough.

• Happy Accident

  Rogansi2008-10-06

  This film is completely worth seeing. A friend of mine recently said it was as if a deer made a movie about human interaction, unable to comprehend what it is to be a human being. It is hilarious. It is also funny how many people actually see this as a real movie, and take the acting, story, and dialogue seriously. It's a sad testament to the state of intelligence of some, but that doesn't detract from the movies awful redemption. There was no way this was made as a 'black comedy' on purpose. The ineptness present in ALL aspects of the film could only come about through an attempt to put Tommy's own high-school angsty experiences (probably) on tape. When the reviews trashed the movie, he pulled a Paul Ruebens "I meant to do that". The denial of the films obvious serious beginnings add even more hilarity. Tommy, we are laughing at you, not with you. Thank you for that.