wiseau

Mainstream show­biz does not have a monop­oly on hype.  Any sec­tor of the enter­tain­ment busi­ness, big or small, can man­u­fac­ture a phe­nom­e­non within its own scene if there are enough peo­ple will­ing to carry the torch… and the biggest hype of recent mem­ory in cult/bad-film cir­cles is Tommy Wiseau’s The Room.

A lot of nouveau-showbiz types (every­one from Kristen Bell to David Cross) have taken this cin­e­matic crash-and-burn to heart and The Room reg­u­larly packs ‘em in at Laemmle’s Sunset 5 the­ater in Hollywood, hav­ing spawned a throng of devo­tees who engage in Rocky Horror/MST3K spectator-sport inter­ac­tion with it.  Writer/director/star Wiseau wisely avoided fight­ing this trend and reg­u­larly appears at these screen­ings, often doing a Q&A ses­sion before the film instead of after it.

Unfortunately, The Room doesn’t deliver the sort of awe-inspiring non-cinema promised by the hard sell of these par­ti­sans and their auteur-idol.  Don’t get Your Humble Reviewer wrong: it’s bad — ter­ri­ble, in fact — but it’s not the kind of crazy-inspirational bad nec­es­sary to cre­ate an anti-classic.  The plot is super-simple: Wiseau plays a well-meaning, phil­an­thropic sap named Johnny who adores his bottle-blond lover and “future wife,” Lisa (Juliette Danielle).  Sadly, she has decided she no longer loves him and begins to fool around with his best friend, Mark (Greg Sestero).  Reams of cheap melo­drama ensue.

In fair­ness to its grow­ing cult, The Room is awful on mul­ti­ple lev­els.  The act­ing and dia­logue con­tin­u­ously plumb new depths of inep­ti­tude.  There are sev­eral cringe-inducing sex scenes in which the star appears to be unfa­mil­iar with how the mis­sion­ary posi­tion works.  Subplots about Lisa’s mother hav­ing breast can­cer and another char­ac­ter being in debt to a drug dealer are sud­denly intro­duced, then abruptly dropped.  The phrase “future wife” is insis­tently used instead of “fiancée.”  Wiseau reigns at the cen­ter of it all, deliv­er­ing his lines in an unknown middle-European accent and emot­ing in a way that sug­gests he’s never seen any sort of act­ing before.

In short, The Room boasts flaws galore… and yet it isn’t that enter­tain­ing, not even on a so-good-it’s-bad level.  Filmmakers reach­ing beyond their abil­i­ties can be enter­tain­ing but they have to do so in an inspired way to deliver a bad-movie clas­sic.  Just like a good film­maker, bad movie auteurs need to be con­stantly inno­vat­ing, con­tin­u­ally top­ping them­selves scene after scene to cre­ate the sort of giddy rush that defines beloved bad-film gems like The Apple or Massacre Mafia Style.  The Room never hits those heights: instead, it estab­lishes a dull, migraine-inducing level of bad­ness in its early scenes and just rides on cruise-control until it reaches the end credits.

Why?  Because Wiseau lacks the pas­sion nec­es­sary to make his inept art awe-inspiring.  Despite his recent claims that the film is a “black com­edy,” Wiseau was obvi­ously try­ing to make the kind of mild, mid­dle­brow indie drama that reg­u­larly gets picked up at Sundance and shuf­fled through art-houses. The Room’s poverty of ambi­tion and inspi­ra­tion keeps the film from ever deliv­er­ing the gonzo-cinema goods.  In fact, the DVD has an inter­view with the direc­tor that is ten times more enter­tain­ing than the film itself.

Therein lies the real tragedy of The Room — it’s not even good at being bad.