The Room / The Disaster Artist
The Citizen Kane of bad movies, so ineptly scripted, directed and acted that it's actually hilarious.
The paper-thin plot concerns a banker who discovers that his best friend and his girlfriend are having an affair, but bereft with suicidal pacing and subplots that go absolutely nowhere, coupled with the atrociously bad acting performances, the material stretches to a running time of 99 minutes, quite a lot of which are made up of sex scenes & outtakes from them.
Writer-director-producer and star Tommy Wiseau almost seems proud of his film's notorious "achievement" of being heralded as one of the worst ever made, and as such a cult following has amassed to celebrate the film's badness.
It's not actual possible to grade this film on a one-to-ten scale due to it being simultaneously awful and unbelievably compelling, therefore it's exempt from a rating. From a filmmaking perspective, including all aspects of writing, direction, acting, cinematography, editing, etc. it barely registers a one, but for sheer entertainment value it's right up there with the classics, just because it's so damn terrible.
-/10
THE DISASTER ARTIST (15)
D: James Franco
Warner Bros / New Line / Ratpac-Dune / Good Universe (James Franco, Vince Jolivette, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg & James Weaver)
USA 🇺🇸 2017
103 mins
W: Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber [based on the book "The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, The Greatest Bad Film Ever Made" by Greg Sestero & Tom Bissell]
DP: Brandon Trost
Ed: Stacey Schroeder
Mus: Dave Porter
Biopic/Comedy
James Franco (Tommy Wiseau), Dave Franco (Greg Sestero), Seth Rogen (Sandy Schklair), Ari Greynor (Juliette Danielle), Alison Brie (Amber), Josh Hutcherson (Philip Haldiman), Jacki Weaver (Carolyn Minnott), Zac Efron (Dan Janjigian)
It's a rich irony that one of the worst films ever made is the basis for one of the best films of 2017.
James Franco doesn't just portray Tommy Wiseau in this comedy biopic, he actually becomes him.
It's quite important to have seen 2003's The Room, dubbed the Citizen Kane of bad movies, before watching this "making of", or some of the references to the awful movie may not catch on.
The Room (qv) was wholly financed by struggling actor, Tommy Wiseau who spent over $6 million on the production, which he also wrote, starred in and directed, but with no filmmaking knowledge, fundamental filmmaking practices weren't just overlooked, but almost mocked (over half of The Room's running time has no bearing on the actual plot of the movie, entire sets were built for little reason, the film was shot on 35mm film and digital video, which require two different lighting methods, etc)
The comedy of errors all begins with the friendship which develops between Wiseau and struggling young actor, Greg Sestero. The two men strike a bond over their admiration of James Dean, which partially inspired Wiseau to write The Room, alongside his infatuation with famous playwright Tennessee Williams.
Though The Room is a terrible piece of work, it has gone on to achieve a cult fanbase, and this tribute to the best worst movie is bang on the money, with an excellent central performance and one of the funniest screenplays of the year. It's very much worth sitting through a terrible movie for.
7/10
