It’s a thing for filmmakers to intentionally create something poor in quality just for laughs, but writer/director Tommy Wiseau generally thinks he’s created a masterpiece. And, in a way, he has. He and the film have so much conviction every step of the way.
It takes a certain type of person to make something as entertainingly bad as The Room. As evident here, Wiseau doesn’t quite understand things the way most people do. Maybe it has to do with the fact that he’s ambiguously foreign. Or maybe it’s just his odd way of looking at things. Or maybe it’s a combination of the two. Either way, it makes for ridiculous results.
The movie’s premise is pretty simple. A man, played by Wiseau, and his “future wife”, Lisa, experience trouble when she becomes interested in his best friend, Mark.
The fact that Wiseau plays the main character makes it even better. He’s a terrible actor. But it’s bad even when he’s not on screen because the script is so terrible, too.
It feels like it’s written by someone with a 5th grade understanding of relationships. Perhaps even a 5th grade understanding of life in general–filled with cliches that don’t even make sense within the context of the film.
It’s the type of movie where, if a character needs to buy flowers, you get to watch an unnecessary dialogue-filled scene where he actually goes to the store to buy them.
There are so many instances where you’re not quite sure what the characters are feeling–which is weird since the script literally tells you everything going on in their heads. But the characters are constantly contradicting themselves that you can’t keep anything straight.
I think it’s because, when writing the script, Tommy kept verbalizing what the audience was thinking rather than what the characters were thinking. There is so much stream-of-consciousness throughout the entire thing.
There’s no sense of time or character consistencies. It’s like the lines of dialogue are never paying any attention to the ones before them. The characters keep referring to things that they don’t even know about yet.
You probably don’t need to read this review to know The Room is bad. It’s one of the most famous bad movies of all time.
But there are two things it does really well. It makes you laugh and it really does make you interested in how it’s going to resolve. Both of these things keep you wanting more.
Most bad movies have no business being bad. But The Room has every right to be.
