All You Can Say for “The Room” (2003) is that It is a Film (Part I of II)
I have a personal axiom about movies, and it goes something like this: “Anyone, at any time, with enough perseverance, can make a film; only a select few, on the rarest of occasions, with a lot of luck, can make the great film.”
No movie epitomizes the first half of this axiom better than “The Room” (2003), a movie that has become so notorious it spawned a best-selling making-of book “The Disaster Artist” (which itself got made into a Golden Globe-winning film).
Chicago Sum-Times film critic Richard Roeper once lambasted “Catwoman” (2004) by calling it “barely a film; it’s more like a music video / TV commercial / computer game,” but in fairness to “The Room”, that is not a fair criticism of it, for it has all the elements of what one would expect when one thinks of a “film.”
There is a story. It revolves around Johnny (Tommy Wiseau), who keeps calling himself “future husband” of Lisa (Juliette Daniel) apparently because he lacks the vocabulary “fiancé.” Lisa is a manipulative, schizofrenic bitch who’s having an affair with Johnny’s best friend Mark (Gregory Sestero).
There is a script. Mark utters lines that are simultaneously deeply philosophical and also utterly nonsensical, like “People are very strange these days” and “Leave your stupid comments in your pocket.”
There is acting. Philip Haldiman plays a character named Denny, who is supposed to be a young student whom Johnny wants to adopt but decidedly looks much older than a teenager.
There is cinematography. The haphazrdly-inserted shot of the Golden Gate Bridge, with the camera moving painstakingly slowly from left to right, leaves no doubt that events of this film take place in San Francisco.
There are special effects. A fight on a rooftop results in Mark pushing Peter (a psychiatrist with sage advice like “People are people”) dangling over the edge in a green screen shot.
There is a theme. Mark and Denny walk around with a football, Johnny and Mark run around the park throwing a football, and a bunch of guys in a tuxedo randomly start throwing around a football.
All these cinematic elements add up to 99 minutes of screentime, a length commensurate of a full-feature film.
Yes, “The Room” is a “film” by any definition of the word, but it’s not a very good one. In fact, to characterize this movie as “bad” would be to suggest that there was an attempt at competence that failed to achieve potential, or even worse, that “it’s so bad, it’s good.”
No. This movie is a dreadful, dreary experience. But you also can’t resist watching it because you won’t believe what goes on in the film unless you actually see it play out on screen.
(Continues to Part II)
