The funniest worst, and therefore one of the greatest movies ever made. Last night, I engaged in a long conversation with my brothers girlfriend. Although my memory is unclear due to the hammering effects of drinking three cocktails, there is one thing I still remember. She declared Legally Blonde as "the worst movie ever."Having seen LegalIy Blonde, I challenged her by reminding her that she had not seen The Room, although she had endured the Nostalgia Critics infamous review of it. While both films are bad, there is a distinguishing difference between a bad film like Legally Blonde and a bad film like The Room. You see, Legally Blonde is bad because like many mainstream films, it has shallow characters. The Room is bad because it fails on every conceivable level that a film can fail which is why it has been dubbed by some academics and as "the Citizen Kane of bad movies". Because Citizen Kane is often cited as "the greatest movie ever made", The Room is therefore "the worst movie ever made" even if the title that has long been held by Plan 9 From Outer Space for well over thirty years. However as bad as The Room is, it delivers unintentional laughs in bucket loads. Go onto Youtube and look up "Hi doggy/Flower shop scene." If you aren't amused by the obvious scripting and editing errors, not to mention the downright bizarre mis en scene, then clearly there must be something wrong with you.
The Room is the story of Johnny (played by writer/ director, Tommy Wiseau), a banker who is about marry his longtime fiancé, Lisa (Juliette Danielle) . After an unnecessarily long and detailed love scene that is briefly interrupted by the perverted Denny who just likes to watch. Lisa figures she is bored of Johnny, and decides to invite his friend Mark (Greg Sestero) over so she can have a talk that involves having sex on a spiral staircase. Drama inevitably ensures, through several convoluted plot points that are instantly dropped before everything climaxes in true Shakespearean style.
One of the great features of The Room is how amazingly repetitive the dialogue is. Every time a character enters a set, they are always greeted with lines like "oh hi Mark", "oh hi Denny" , "oh hi doggy". The "oh hi" phrase is repeated so often, it's almost as if Tommy thought they were necessary to remind us that the scene has now changed. But that's not the only thing he reminds us about. Every time Lisa seduces Mark, he always declares "Johnny is my best friend". At several points in the film, Lisa's mother ,Claudette comes in to remind us that by cheating on her fiancé, Lisa is going to suffer deep financial troubles. If you want see what plot driven dialogue looks like in its most unsubtle, non character driven form, look no further.
The character interactions are also monotonous. In the films first half hour, we see three sex scenes that are ridiculously gratuitous to the point of nearly being soft core. The only way for Johnny to hang out with his friends is to play football. Johnny laughs even if friends tell him something that wasn't meant to be funny or ironic.
The limited character interactions are not helped by the acting either. Never before seeing the famous "I did NUHT" moment, had I ever seen acting that was so detached and void of any convincing emotion that replacing the actors with Hayden Christiansen or even the HAL 9000 computer could actually mark an improvement.
And yet, because of its sheer level of badness combined with Wiseau's love of film, The Room represents a rare feat in cinema. Its success is the kind that many would be directors have wished for. Yes it's a bad amateur film by a clueless first time director . But like many of the best films like Quentin Tarrantino's Pulp Fiction, or Monty Python and The Holy Grail, it delivers scene after unforgettable scene with schizophrenic writing that's hilarious enough to deliver the kind of joy that could finally give Super Mario an erection after twenty five years of sexless marriage.
The Room came out in 2003, the same year that gave us hits like The Matrix sequels, Bruce Almighty, Terminator 3 and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle which all made millions at the box office. But none of those films are likely to be quoted five years from now. By contrast The Room is much worse than those films and vanished into thin air upon release. It has since attracted an ever growing cult with some fans who were dedicated enough to faithfully adapt it into a video game.
Yes, the films I've listed are bad. But they do not have the passion that The Room has to reach for a high level artistic greatness. And because the film aims so high, it fails so hard. Because it fails so hard, it is without doubt the worst film ever made. But because the film often aims so high and fails so hard, it is without doubt one of the funniest and therefore greatest films ever made. Wiseau did not make the masterpiece he wanted to make, but he still made one. I think that's enough to satisfy any director.
For: Extremely funny in the most unintentional ways.
Against Technically speaking its horrendous.
Rating 10 out of 10